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Innuendo   /ɪnjuˈɛndoʊ/   Listen
Innuendo

noun
(pl. innuedoes)
1.
An indirect (and usually malicious) implication.  Synonym: insinuation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Innuendo" Quotes from Famous Books



... the pulse is beginning to prickle; see how quickly the dead man comes to life! Well, come along—but softly, still! Come, we must go to the little Baroness." I suffered myself to be led away in silence. The way in which Adelheid spoke of the Baroness seemed to me undignified, and the innuendo of an understanding between us positively shameful. When I entered the room along with Adelheid, Seraphina, with a low-breathed "Oh!" advanced three or four paces quickly to meet me; but then, as if recollecting ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... part of the Koran, including the "Memorabilia," the reviewer suggests the name "Sterniana." The reviewer acknowledges the occasional failure in attempted thrusts of wit, the ineffective satire, the immoral innuendo in some passages, but after the first word of doubt the review passes on into a tone of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... though with ever-increasing success. Here and there, where for a long period no blue-penciled passage occurred, imaginary censorings had been inserted merely to whip curiosity, with the result that the atmosphere of innuendo and suggestion was greatly increased. Indeed, the whole piece reeked of it, new situations had been evolved which the play had not previously contained; and a stimulated audience sat metaphorically with its eye to an eye-hole from which the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... precise information required of the liability of the drug to produce miscarriages. Sometimes the information is conveyed through secret circulars; but more commonly the deed is consummated by professed abortionists, who advertise themselves as such through innuendo, or through gaining this kind of repute by the frequent commission of the act. Not a few women, deterred by lingering modesty or some sense of shame, attempt and execute it upon themselves, and then volunteer to instruct and encourage others to ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... do you account for the perpetual undercurrent of meaning and innuendo that may be found ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... (taciturnity) 585; concealment &c. 528; more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear; Delphic oracle; le dessous des cartes[Fr], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c. 527; adumbration; "something rotten in the state of Denmark" [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c. (pitfall) 667; secret &c. 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c. adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape detection, escape ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... thought; and most of them the dregs of the South Seas, casting their evil glances at this exquisite creature and trying to smirch with innuendo the crystal clearness of her mind. Perhaps there were experiences she would never confide to any man. Sudden indignation boiled up in him. The father was a madman. It did not matter that he wore the cloth; something was wrong with him. He hadn't ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... that there has been a studied effort— ascribed by me to the common tactics of political warfare—to create the impression, by vague innuendo, that I have used my official position to make money for myself. I know that this charge or imputation is without the slightest foundation, and I now repeat that I never was pecuniarily interested in any question, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... not married yet," continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the innuendo. "Ah Cal," she added archly, "I am afraid you are as fickle as ever. What poor girl in Vineville ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... could arise. A pretty young actress offered to give a premiere of a comedy which she was about to take on the road, for the benefit of the street, and every one was delighted until they saw a rehearsal. It was one of those estranged-husband-one-cocktail-too-many farces, full of innuendo and profanity. J—— and his partner were much upset, but it was too late to withdraw. The company, in deference to the Red Cross, agreed to leave out everything but the plain damns. Even then it wasn't what they would have chosen, and two very depressed ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little ejaculations at intervals. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... Burr) was ever consulted in relation to them. These resolutions elicited a heated debate; in the progress of which all the commissioners, except the attorney-general, were assailed with great bitterness; and charges of corruption by innuendo were unceremoniously made. At a late hour the house adjourned without ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... to play picquet for a sovereign a hundred, or anything like it; but after his adversary's innuendo it was impossible for a young gentleman of spirit to admit the ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... self-denial of her sex. To be welcome to Griffith she had to speak to him of her rival, and to speak well of her. She tried talking of herself and her attachment; he yawned in her face: she tried smooth detraction and innuendo; he fired up directly, and defended her of whose conduct he had been complaining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... O'Brien did not meet a similar fate was due only to the fact that he was made of sterner fighting stuff—that he possessed a more intrepid spirit and a more indomitable will. But the base weapons of calumny and of viler innuendo were employed to injure him in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, to whom he had devoted, in a manner never surely equalled or surpassed before, a life of service and sacrifice. The Freeman's Journal, whilst suppressing Mr O'Brien's speeches and arguments, threw its columns open to ruffianly attacks ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... occultness, mystery, cabala^, anagoge^; silence &c (taciturnity) 585; concealment &c 528; more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear; Delphic oracle; le dessous des cartes [Fr.], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c 527; adumbration; something rotten in the state of Denmark [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c (pitfall) 667; secret &c 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... bit his lip, and he looked exceedingly vexed. Although he had himself blindly imbibed the notion that America would gladly receive the devil himself if he came with a full pocket, he was shocked with the coarseness that would throw such an innuendo into the very faces of the people of the country. On the other hand, his pride as an officer was hurt at the menace of Captain Truck, and all the former harmony of the scene was threatened with a sudden termination. Captain Ducie ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... upbraid him for speaking of her disrespectfully, and then at last forgive him, and so part friends. She felt that she would be unhappy to leave him in her present frame of mind; but yet she could hardly bring herself to speak to him of Mr Slope. And how could she allude to the innuendo thrown out by the archdeacon, and thrown out, as she believed, at the instigation of Mr Arabin? She wanted to make him know that he was wrong, to make him aware that he had ill-treated her, in order ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... grand seigneur had not been merged in the soldier: the brusquerie of the camp had not overlaid the manner of the courtly school in which he and all his race had been trained; the school of those who would stab their enemy to the heart with sarcasm or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse—of those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... blood boiling; the second she could not finish for her tears; the third dried her eyes with the fires of fierce resentment. It was not so much what they said; it was what they were obviously afraid to say. It was their circumlocution, their innuendo, their mild surprise, their perfunctory congratulations, their assumption of chivalry and their lack of its essence, that wounded and stung the subject of these effusions. As she raised her flushed face from the last of them, Mr. Steel stood ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... a lot of people running about his book, without any invitation from him at all. However, since Woggs is there, we must make the best of her. I fancy that she was a year or two younger than Wiggs and of rather inferior education. Witness her low innuendo about the Lady Belvane, and the fact that she ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... bond-servant, leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... complacent, curious, blightingly unconscious of his emotions, and the young man felt a stirring of hot impatience. Insinuation and innuendo were of no use where Pixie O'Shaughnessy was concerned; an ordinary girl might scent a proposal afar off and amuse herself by an affectation of innocence, but nothing short of a plain declaration of love would convince Pixie ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now the malignants were around him (while ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail. In fullest publicity it was licensed ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... all kissed Casanova a tender good-night, Teresina behaving exactly like her sisters. He made them promise that they would soon come with their father and mother to visit him in Venice. When they had gone, he spoke with less restraint, but continued to avoid any unsuitable innuendo or display of vanity. His audience might have imagined themselves listening to the story of a Parsifal rather than to that of a Casanova, the dangerous seducer and ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... point the reader discerns that he has been duped, that nowhere has there been a denial of Whiston's charge that the reading of messianic prophecy in a typical or allegorical or secondary sense is "weak and enthusiastical." On the contrary, the reader finds only the damning innuendo that the two methods—the allegorical and the literal—differ from one another not in kind but in degree of absurdity. After being protected for a long time by all the twists and turns of his creator's irony, the persona finally reveals himself for what he is, a man totally insolent and ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... walked on, smiling at Piero's innuendo, with a sort of tenderness towards the old painter's anger, because she knew that her father would have felt something like it. For herself, she was conscious of no inward collision with the strict and sombre view of pleasure which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... at that instant was one of being on the point of seeing behind the curtain of a mystery, of making a discovery so sinister that she would gasp. Her very finger almost rested upon it. Why were Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Burkhardt talking as they were? Trying by innuendo to make it seem her companion might have been guilty of a crime? Could it be—— Her blood slowly congealed to ice at the horror ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... meaning of a passage in a letter from Captain Courtenay's sister which alluded to his affianced wife. It is not such a tragic admission, is it? I would scarce have given it another thought were it not for your manner this morning and your words last night. I paid no heed at the time to the innuendo that I had come on deck to find him—to waylay him, as I have heard men say when speaking of a type of woman I despise. So I resolved to straighten out a stupid little tangle. It would be ridiculous, in our present state of suspended animation, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics, true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed by those who read between the lines. It is not surprising that these sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow. Even those of us who repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock at the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then disfigures Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other subjects. For this the attitude of the Church itself was much to blame; coarse, virulent, unspiritual as it was in France in those days. Voltaire, Diderot, Holbach, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... that may be wanted in any case to complete a syllogism, and thereby test the argument's formal validity. In any Enthymeme of the Third Order, especially, to supply the conclusion cannot present any difficulty at all; and hence it is a favourite vehicle of innuendo, as ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... in Arabia, we find it being persecuted by commercial zealots in the United States. And even in the house of its friends, coffee was being stabbed in the back. The coffee merchants themselves presented the spectacle of "knocking" it by inference and innuendo. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... was rather by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and merits, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies of humor. The promptitude with which he discovered the slightest weakness, the faintest symptom of exaggeration or affectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became transparent ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... we were forbidden, under severe penalty, to wear any but regulation dress. Nevertheless, the lucky dogs who had relatives near by would take the risk and borrow a cousin's rig-out, but we hated them as mean dogs, feeling they were taking an unfair advantage; and, if we got a chance, we would, by innuendo, hint to the lady in the case that these fellows did so much dixie-cleaning that their dungarees ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... did in developing their countries. Why, in some backward parts, the natives had been content to live by hunting and fishing till we furnished them with employment and paid them enough so they could buy salt fish and canned meats. Fortunately La Prensa's innuendo, so obviously inspired by envy, was not taken up, and attention soon turned from the insoluble problem of the bridging of the gap to the southward progress ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... The little man was hot with vexation at the scene that followed. He liked Helen; he was unutterably shocked by Millicent's attack; and he resented the unfair and untrue construction that must be placed on her latest innuendo. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... you know, published it merely as an accident—which it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that Jose Querida might have been any nice man calling ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... James's, and with her set, Lady Clonbrony suffered a different kind of mortification from that which Lady Langdale and Mrs. Dareville made her endure. She was safe from the witty raillery, the sly innuendo, the insolent mimicry; but she was kept at a cold, impassable distance, by ceremony—'So far shalt thou go, and no farther' was expressed in every look, in every word, and in a ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... as well smoke now—as later!" and there was a wealth of innuendo in the emphasis. "Is that all you are going to ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... of a ham, and his little gleaming eyes like crumbs of glass in the centre of it, is the king of all seafaring desperadoes. Observe how the strong effect is produced in his case: seldom by direct assertion on the part of the story-teller, but usually by comparison, innuendo, or indirect reference. The objectionable Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel." Or, again, where John himself says, "there was some ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... continued, looking straight at the ottoman before me, "because people so often appear to disadvantage at first," but my arrow fell flat to the ground. Miss Merivale had not enough acumen to detect anything personal in the innuendo; resuming her incisive smile she ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... possessed recommendations, or could have frankly confessed the truth, perhaps I might have been given a chance. But as it was everywhere, suspicion was aroused by my reticence, my inability to explain, and the interview ended in curt dismissal, or suggestive innuendo." ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... which Dorothy paid as tribute to this subtle innuendo came near to rivaling one of young Nisbet's celebrated ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... sally. Everyone saw the innuendo at once—everyone except the clergyman, and when he grasped the point, that Ol' Chum So-and-So was on the Danger List and a shortage of timber was supposed to imply that he might be done out of a ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... silence her; or else it was its innuendo that struck the princess dumb with indignation. Lanyard's laugh offered amends for the rudeness, as if he said: "Sorry—but you asked for it, you know." He stepped aside, caught up a handful of her jewels that had been left, a tempting heap, openly exposed on her dressing-table ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... the pony have his way, and was off in a clatter. Lonely, fuming with resentment, Rudolph stared after him. What could he know, this airy, unfeeling meddler, so free with his advice and innuendo? Let him go, then, let him canter away. He had seen quickly, guessed with a diabolic shrewdness, yet would remain on the surface, always, of a mystery so violent and so profound. The young man stalked into his vacant nunnery in a rage, a dismal pomp of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church. Gibbon apparently had not the courage to admit that he agreed with his friend Hume in rejecting miracles altogether. He conceals his drift in a cloud of words, suggesting indirectly with innuendo and sneer his real opinion. But this does not account for the stress he lays on the ascription of miracles. He seems to think that the claim of supernatural gifts somehow had the same efficacy as the gifts themselves would have had, if they ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... remarks. Campaign committees spread them abroad in pamphlet form. Attention was directed to such phrases as "I do not feel that I shall prove a dead-head" and "I see various channels in which I know I can be useful." Hostile cartoonists used the phrases with an infinite variety of innuendo. But the most powerful evidence was still to come. On September 15, 1884, Fisher and Mulligan made public additional letters which Blaine had not possessed at the time of his defence in 1876. The most damaging of these was one in which Blaine had drawn up a letter ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Matron, force On Folly in her 'teens The value of a stalking-horse When hunting Rank and Means? And is the Summer Widow's mind Aggrieved and horrified to find That, as her male acquaintance grows, Her female circle pass her by With Innuendo's outraged eye, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... the lines over twice, to convince himself that he was not mistaken, and that it was Prince Zilah who was designated with the skilfully veiled innuendo of an expert journalist. There was no chance for doubt; the indistinct nationality of the great lord spoken of thinly veiled the Magyar characteristics of Andras, and the paragraph which preceded the "Little Parisian Romance" was very skilfully arranged to let the public guess ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... made the lowest possible bow to Mr. Washington and his mother, was by no means in good humour with either of them, and in all his further conversation that day with Colonel Washington showed a bitter sarcasm and a depth of innuendo which the Colonel was at a loss to understand. A short time after George's entrance into the Colonel's presence Harry answered back a remark of George's to the effect that he hated sporting by saying, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... and disingenuous, he has not failed to imitate this trait of friendship also. But just as clever cooks infuse bitter sauces and sharp seasoning to prevent sweet things from cloying, so these flatterers do not use a genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and tickling innuendo. He is therefore difficult to detect, like those creatures which naturally change their colour and take that of the material or place near them.[366] But since he deceives and conceals his true character ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... envelope (the most successful of all the versions published), and his early Punch work. Mr. Frith tells of Mulready's indignation at Leech's drawing—not at the caricature itself, but at the leech in a bottle, by which the Academician took it for granted that the draughtsman meant to designate him by innuendo as a "blood-sucker;" and of Leech's surprise and pain at being so suspected, and how the two men became fast friends ever after. Once a regular Punch man, Leech immediately expanded, and as quickly hit the taste and fancy of the public; ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry. They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... seems to me as if the lawyers spend most of their time trying to make the judge and jury believe the witnesses are all criminals. Everything a man says on the stand or has ever done in his life is made the subject of a false inference—an innuendo. The law isn't constructive—it's destructive; and that's why I want my boy to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... directors and their officers; "but," he added, looking fixedly at Mr. Craggs as he spoke, "there were other men in high station, whom, in time, he would not be afraid to name, who were no less guilty than the directors." Mr. Craggs arose in great wrath, and said, that if the innuendo were directed against him, he was ready to give satisfaction to any man who questioned him, either in the House or out of it. Loud cries of order immediately arose on every side. In the midst of the uproar Lord Molesworth got up, and expressed his wonder at the boldness of Mr. Craggs in challenging ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... he said in a good-humored tone. "Mr. Lennox meant no innuendo. He merely stated a fact to prove ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... probable that, having heard by some means of Trevethick's hoard, he had come down to Gethin with the express intention of becoming possessed of it, which his accidental discovery of the secret of the letter padlock enabled him to do. In short, by artful innuendo at this or that part of the story, Richard was painted as a common thief, whose possession of such faculties as dexterity and finesse only made him a more dangerous enemy of society. There had been rumors, Mr. Smoothbore admitted, of certain romantic circumstances connected with the case, but he ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... doorway, and Diana was left to deal as best she might with the innuendo contained ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... strength were embodied in the Emperor. Mme. de Remusat was tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee, or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady opened her troubles to the sympathetic ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... grace; who had caused the brethren great pain; and whom recent circumstances had especially rendered an object of suspicion and alarm. There was much more to the same effect. There was no distinct charge—nothing tangible, or of which I could defy them to the proof. All was dark doubt and murderous innuendo. There was nothing for which I could claim relief from the laws of my country—more than enough to complete my ruin. I burned with anger and indignation; forgot every thing but the cold-blooded designs of the minister; and, stung to action by the imminent danger in which I stood, I rushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... be true or not, it is plain that she seems always to have remembered their difference of rank, and to have been rather cold than encouraging. The issue of the acquaintance is a sorry one. Pope revenged himself for her scorn in his worst and most unmanly fashion of innuendo; she, on her side, retorted with lampoons and satire as cruel. One feels glad that she finally left England and that further bickering was impossible. The other two persons were the already mentioned Blounts, each of whom seems at first to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... bowl. He had brought back to life a cracked guitar, which he had strung with copper wire obtained by "jawbone" at the Chino store. It was an inspiration when he sang to the guitar accompaniment, "Ma Filipino Babe," or in a rich and melancholy voice, with the professional innuendo, "just to jolly the game along," a song entitled ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... asperity marred the music of those tones; Mr. Blensop further indicated distaste of the innuendo inherent in Lanyard's use of the word "employer" by delicately ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... highly sensitised plate. And partly because of her previous entire ignorance, partly because of her extreme receptiveness, she soon outstripped her comrades, and before long, was one of the most skilful improvisers of the group: a dexterous theorist: a wicked little adept at innuendo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... enemy's works at nearly the same time as the naval action begins in the bay. I ascribe the disappointment I have experienced to the unfortunate change of wind, and shall rejoice to learn that my reasonable expectations have been frustrated by no other cause.' 'No other cause.' The innuendo, even if unintentional, was there. Downie, a junior sailor, was perhaps suspected of 'shyness' by a very senior soldier. Prevost's poison worked quickly. 'I will convince him that the Navy won't be backward,' said Downie to his second, Pring, who gave this evidence, under oath, ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... of a pure woman that every man thinks he has a right to make love to is the shyest of all souls. Such a woman sheds innuendo and actions with the proverbial ease of a duck disposing of a shower. But just words—the right words—will bring tears to her eyes. Well, I'd ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... to hang about her to the amusement of onlookers, to keep alive her passion by look and hint and innuendo, to excite her by advances when he was in the humour, and studiously repulse her when she made any, to act almost as if he were her fiance, and curtly resent it if she ever assumed he was more than an ordinary friend—this line of action he saw no fault in. The above were his views, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... it was conveyed to Palmerston, which seems highly probable—was not the only diplomatic innuendo of the autumn of 1862 that has escaped the pages of history. Slidell at Paris, putting together the statements of the British Ambassador and those of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, found in them contradictions as to what was going on between the two governments in relation to America. ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... last person to exercise a mollifying influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned the flame of indignation with comment and innuendo—recognized Faircloth from the description, and proceeded to wash his hands in scandalous insinuation ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... criminal lawyers are not in a position to "hammer" the prosecuting officer, but endeavor instead to suggest by innuendo or even open ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... ideas that float in the air of one's time, this notion shrinks from dogmatic general statement and expresses itself only partially and by innuendo. It seems to me that few conceptions are less instructive than this re-interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality. It reminds one, so crudely is it often employed, of the famous Catholic taunt, that the Reformation may be best understood by remembering that its ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... are the parties about to be united?" said he, addressing Roberts and Lady Emily, with a bow that had in it a strong professional innuendo, but of what nature was yet ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... meet her womanly innuendo with a coarse and abrupt denial," said he. "There are some shreds of common decency ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... likely to be drawn. Since the time you speak of there has been no opportunity for you to meet your fellow-men, therefore these inferences are apt to take the color that reference is made to one or the other of the three personages you did meet. I therefore counsel you either to abstain from innuendo or explain explicitly what ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... case, Sir Bartimeus has written it, and then so late in the day I come with a different story, a truer but different story. What will they do? Reader, the future is dark, uncertain and long; I dare not trust myself to it if I offend History. Clio and Sir Bartimeus will make hay of my reputation; an innuendo here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a soul will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian of pique. Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window, forgetful of all around, on battles ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... it recorded, that in the midst of a luxurious and dissipated age, they preserved two houses in the capital, where the conversation was always moral at least, if not entertaining! Dang. Now, egad, I think the worst alteration is in the nicety of the audience!—No double-entendre, no smart innuendo admitted; even Vanbrugh and Congreve obliged to undergo a bungling reformation! Sneer. Yes, and our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtesan, who increases the ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... The innuendo, if designed to make Mowbray smile, was far from succeeding. He stepped forward, with more than usual stiffness in his air, which was never entirely free from self-consequence, and said to Lady Binks, "May I request to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... pretty well, eh?" and he asked the next moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as different; and he could scarce have explained the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... he had known, she had most truly and unselfishly loved him. And for her years of service he had given her contempt. He reflected, too, that he had, perhaps, made an enemy where he needed a friend. How easy, by innuendo and suggestion, to turn Hedwig against him, Hedwig who already ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Volney's eyes. He understood it for no chance remark, but as an innuendo tossed forth as a challenge. Of all men Sir Robert Volney rode on the crest of fortune's wave, and there were not lacking those who whispered that his invariable luck was due to something more than chance and honest skill. For me, I never believed the charge. With all his faults ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Perhaps, after all, this was one of those hatefully clever sahibs who know enough to pretend they do not know! The abuse and vile innuendo changed to more obsequious, less obviously filthy references to other things than Cunningham's religion, likes, and pedigree, and the little crowd of men who had tacitly encouraged him before got ready now to stand ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more for her good name than for his love of her. It would have been ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... [We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether to terminate it by the methods already so successfully ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... reputation of Sir Alfred Milner as a statesman and as a politician was constantly challenged by the very people who ought to have defended it. Rhodes himself had been persuaded that the Governor harboured the most sinister designs against his person. The innuendo was one of the most heinous untruths ever invented by his ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... but a fool, sir; and he's still less of a knave," said Radley, angry and caring only to repudiate Fillet's innuendo. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... undefined combination of giggle and strut and rhodomontade, endowed with allopathic quantities of talk, but only homeopathic infinitesimals of sense, the terror of dry-goods clerks and railroad conductors, discoverers of significant meanings in plain conversation, prodigies of badinage and innuendo—I say: "Vashti ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... Mervyn's innuendo had deprived his offer of its grace, but in spite of the pang of indignation, in spite of Robert's eye of disapproval, poor desolate Phoebe must needs cling to her home, and to the one who alone would take her and her poor companion. 'Mervyn, thank ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... innuendo, like the majority of the audience, he did not understand, but he saw the wink which passed between the two elder boys. Ever since that day when he had gathered flowers for his mother in Kensal Green Cemetery he had known of dark things, just beyond his ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... tired of his volubility, testily interrupted him, and pronounced these accounts mere traveller's tales, or the exaggerations of peasants and innkeepers. The landlord was indignant at the doubt levelled at his stories, and the innuendo levelled at his cloth; he cited half a dozen stories still more terrible, to corroborate those he had ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... the true innuendo-way of characterizing, used by detractors. Every body and every thing had a black and a white side, of which well wishers and ill wishers may make their advantage. He had observed that the front house was well let, and he believed more ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... there broke in upon the Church a great deal of luxury and high living, on the pretence of hospitality; while others made purchases, and left great estates, most of which we have seen melt away.—Swift. Uncharitable aggravation; a base innuendo. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... public advertisements of the Emperor's favor and esteem she was entirely free from any sort of worry. Her enemies were few, merely Calvaster and his parasites, and they were thoroughly cowed and curbed their tongues. Not only no defamation of her but not even an innuendo gained currency in the gossip of the city during the remainder of her term ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40's, with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes. He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable thing. With the eyes of Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed her with tales of distant climes and wooed her by respectful innuendo. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... adverse decision, went grimly on. Enemies of Prosecution, backed by an enormous fund, were setting innumerable obstacles in their way. Witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Jurors showed evidence of having been tampered with. Through a subsidized press an active propaganda of Innuendo ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... [FN125] The innuendo is intelligible and I may draw attention to the humorous skill with which the mother-in-law's character ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... nowadays," she returned, not perceiving the innuendo. "I am sure Papa ought to know all about it from the amount ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... and "interested attentions," and other similar expressions—all of which, however, were lost upon Titmouse. Tapping with an auctioneer's hammer on a block of granite, would make about as much impression upon it as will hint, innuendo, or suggestion, upon a blockhead. So it was with Titmouse. He promised to dine at Satin Lodge on the Sunday after the ensuing one—with which poor Mr. Tag-rag was obliged to depart content; having been unable to get Titmouse up to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... faces and discourteous greetings, half-insolent nods, and more than one wrangle at the workmen's meeting. Hurd felt anxious and discouraged. Yardley took a low fever, not severe enough to confine him to the house, but it made him irritable, and every sneer or innuendo cut him to the quick. Cameron was a great comfort to Jack, with his queer, wrinkled, grizzled face, and an expression that always puzzled you as to whether nature meant ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... circumstance, however, that the book was one long and powerful innuendo against the Church, would not have been enough to secure its vast popularity. Attacks on the Church had become cheap by this time. The eighteenth century, as it is one of the chief aims of these studies to show, had a positive side of at least equal ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the dog! And we all know ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to raise money for this new campaign opening before it. Orde, returning to Lansing after a trip devoted to the carrying out of Newmark's directions as to finances, was dismayed at the tangle of strategy and cross-strategy, innuendo, vague and formless cobweb forces by which he was surrounded. He could make nothing of them. They brushed his face, he felt their influence, yet he could place his finger on no tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... he came, but not to beat his beautiful daughter. On the contrary, he made much of her. Fuddled he was, but not drunk. He took her incontinent upon his knee and began to deal in rather liberal innuendo. Divining him darkly, she went to work with such arts as she had to wheedle the worst out ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... glanced over the paper. The Brown paper of the evening before contained a nasty little story of innuendo about the work of the Survey near Paloma. The morning paper declared in glaring headlines that the President by his pacifist policy toward Mexico was tainting the nation's honor and that it would shortly bring England, France and Germany about ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... said under his breath, or openly, or by innuendo as the sentiment of his company demanded, four and twenty canoes laden with the fruits of taxation had come to the Ochori city, and five only of those partly filled had paddled down to headquarters to carry the Ochori tribute to the overlord ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... all this domestic trouble and tragedy, the young wife's health has suffered—she scarcely enjoys one day of good health. Her mental condition is even worse. She submits to innuendo and insult under the impression that she is the unwitting cause of all the domestic wretchedness and often wishes she had never entered the marriage state. We must remember that these conditions wreck ideals and homes, and that they frequently render inefficient ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... elaborate meals, the drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of the house and supplied ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... Nothing, however, but The Temple has held popular estimation, and that has held it firmly, being as much helped by the Tractarian as by the Romantic movement. It may be confessed without shame and without innuendo that Herbert has been on the whole a greater favourite with readers than with critics, and the reason is obvious. He is not prodigal of the finest strokes of poetry. To take only his own contemporaries, and undoubtedly pupils, his gentle moralising and devotion are tame and cold ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... captain was doing, serving his country in foreign parts, while such as these were shining without a captain at home. Janet approved his conduct, and was right. 'What can a wife think the man worth who sits down to guard his house-door?' she answered my slight innuendo. She compared the man to a kennel-dog. 'This,' said I, 'comes of made-up matches,' whereat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... intimated, was partially drunk, and spoke out of the fullness of his heart. But except for this one outburst, a stranger, especially one who did not know the New England disposition, and its preference for innuendo to any other mode of speech, in referring to the most important and exciting topics, would have failed entirely to get the idea that these farmers and laborers contemplated an act of armed rebellion on the morrow. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... disappointed solicitor for high office, and whom the government had declined to assist in an unwarrantable arrangement of the duties and salary of the judicial post he at present occupied. The learned Recorder, justly indignant at this depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed copy of his speeches. He gave the most minute and elaborate study to ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal Herald—a thin weekly, with a patent inside—connects the red nose and the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the neglected state of the road. Fifteen ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... provoked, is an attack on the other university, the innuendo being that the troops were ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various

... matter laid or charged in said indictment or information, comprehending the criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of the libel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, and the application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, and other devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... lesson, and that lesson is, that the bar can be the theatre of the highest rank of eloquence, and that all which is regarded as the limit of forensic excellence, is a gratuitous degradation of its own dignity. The sharp retort, the sly innuendo, the dexterous hint, the hard, keen subtlety, the rough common sense, all valuable in their degree, and all profitable to their possessor, are only of an inferior grade. Let the true orator come forth, and the spruce pleader ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... may trust our divination, a preference for French models, Balzac, De Musset, Feuillet, Taine, Gautier, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, especially the three latter. He emulates successfully their suavity, their urbanity, their clever knack of conveying a fuller meaning by innuendo than by direct bluntness of statement. If not the best school for substance, it is an admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by example. It is the same school in which the writers of what used to be called our classical period ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... every dictate of humanity and of reason point to the conclusion that the dawn of this knowledge should be invested with all that is tender, and loving, and pure, and sacred, instead of being shrouded in the mists of innuendo or blazoned forth in the shamelessness of bestiality? There is really no answer but one to such a question, and the plain truth is that fathers, perhaps still more mothers, must recognize the duty which lies ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... a coolie would pay a few cash as many dollars are demanded of the foreigner. My boy stands by, however, magnificently proud of his lucrative and important post, yelling precautions to the curious populace to stand away. He hints, he does not declare outright, but by ungentle innuendo allows them to understand that, whatever their private characters may be, to him they are all liars and rogues and thieves. It is all so funny, that one's fatigue is minimized to the last degree by the humor one gets and the novel changes ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle



Words linked to "Innuendo" :   implication, insinuation



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