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Long-legged   /lɔŋ-lˈɛgəd/   Listen
Long-legged

adjective
1.
Having long legs.  Synonyms: leggy, long-shanked.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Long-legged" Quotes from Famous Books



... were watered; but have since been told that water is so near the surface the herdsmen have no great depth to dig to procure any quantity. We thought we could have made a good pick or two amongst the horses, but we didn't care for long-legged ugly big-horned cattle brutes. Here and there was a herdsman mounted on a small Indian pony with a high Mexican saddle, enormous spurs, and a long lasso, galloping and dexterously turning ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... not only intensely annoyed but also greatly puzzled at this behaviour on the part of the great, long-legged, long-necked creatures, for I could not believe that the flight had been the result of any carelessness on my part; but while I stood watching them rapidly increasing the distance between themselves and me I became aware ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... to an instant standstill. Knowing that the successful pursuit of a single buck reindeer might mean a long run, I made no attempt to go after him myself; but I told Egingwah and Ooblooyah, my two stalwart, long-legged youngsters, to take the 40-82 Winchesters and be off. At the word they were flying across country, eager as dogs loosed from the traces, crouching low and running quickly. They took a course which would ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... These peculiar long-legged Ducks are very abundant in southern Texas during the summer months. They build their nests in hollow trees, often quite a distance from the water. They lay their eggs upon the bottom of the cavity ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper—you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... said Linklater, when this pressing message was delivered to him. "Well, let him come in and be d—d, that I should say sae! This now is some red-headed, long-legged, gillie-white-foot frae the West Port, that, hearing of my promotion, is come up to be a turn-broche, or deputy scullion, through my interest. It is a great hinderance to any man who would rise in the world, to have such friends to hang by his skirts, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... preceded. No naturalism. Prevalence of geometric patterns (III, Figs. 18 and 19). Not much variety. Meanders, lozenges, and zigzags. Circles joined by tangents replace Mycenaean spirals. Ornament crowded. Rows or single specimens of long-legged water birds. Human figures rare, rude ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... well carved desks, at which the elder pupils sat when they wrote in their copy-books. At the end nearest the door stood a huge rusty stove, always red-hot in winter, and near it were a big wooden water-pail and tin dipper. At the other end of the room stood the master's desk, a long-legged rickety structure, with a stool to match, from which lofty throne the ruler of Number Nine could command a view of his realm and spy out its most remote region of insubordination. Behind him was the blackboard, a piece of sheep-skin used as an eraser, and ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... get any further, for at the sight of the long-legged master, who stalked down from the desk, quite scandalized at this disturbance of order, the head suddenly stopped in its harangue, and with a hearty, "Well, I'm blest! what a ghost!" disappeared, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... two. Walking in the woods one day in early fall, in the vicinity of West Point, I started up a thrush that was sitting on the ground. It alighted on a branch a few yards off, and looked new to me. I thought I had never before seen so long-legged a thrush. I shot it, and saw that it was a new acquaintance. Its peculiarities were its broad, square tail; the length of its legs, which were three and three quarters inches from the end of the middle toe ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... muttered the lad; "I can hear you, old Joe. He's got away again, and I shan't come. A stupid-headed, vicious, long-legged beast, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... Union forces were routed in the first battle of Bull Run, there were many civilians present, who had gone out from Washington to witness the battle. Among the number were several Congressmen. One of these was a tall, long-legged fellow, who wore a long-tailed coat and a high plug hat. When the retreat began, this Congressman was in the lead of the entire crowd fleeing toward Washington. He outran all the rest, and was the first man to arrive in the city. No person ever made ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Hunting-Leopard, still kept for the chase by native noblemen in India, is an animal very distinct from the true leopard. It is much more lanky and long-legged than the pure felines, is unable to climb trees, and has claws only partially retractile. Wood calls it a link between the feline and canine races. One thousand Cheetas were attached to Akbar's hunting establishment; and the chief one, called Semend-Manik, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... horror-struck into the kitchen. The water had gutted the whole first floor; corn, money, almost every movable thing had been swept away, and there was left only a small white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, breezy, long-legged letters, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... long-legged boy with a lean, but good-natured face, now streaked with perspiration and dirt, struggled to his feet, and began to feel his lower extremities sympathetically, as though the terrific strain had centered mostly upon that particular part ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... saw striding past him, long-legged and proud as a turkey cock, a magnificent camel. The sight quickened his pulse; where there were camels lions could not be far away, and indeed within five minutes he saw coming towards him with guns on their shoulders, a whole company of lion ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... country abounding in minerals, and coasts swarming with fish, the Nova-Scotians appear to have expunged the word progress from their dictionary—still live in shingle houses, in streets without side walks, rear long-legged ponies, and talk largely about railroads, which they seem as if they would never complete, because they trust more to the House of Assembly than to their own energies. Consequently their astute and enterprising neighbours the Yankees, the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... Schiller, grey in the wings, tall, long-legged, with large remote grey eyes which sometimes filled with meaning and became almost beautiful, with nose a little to one side, and bearded lips just open—Ashurst, forty-eight, and silent, grasped the luncheon basket, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and gentle pleasant face. "Is this your eldest son?" said he, turning to Dr. May—and the manner of both was as if they were already well acquainted. "No, this is my second. The eldest is not quite such a long-legged fellow," said Dr. May. And then followed the question addressed to Norman himself, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... stamp, As wonderful as on creation's day:— A little better would he live, hadst Thou Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's light 45 Which he calls reason, and employs it only To live more beastlily than any beast. With reverence to Your Lordship be it spoken, He's like one of those long-legged grasshoppers, Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever 50 The same old song i' the grass. There let him lie, Burying his nose in every heap ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... tallest. It is strange to see those little bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous old gentlemen with tender feet wince and tremble while the long-legged ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... crevices during the day. But there are some which love the sunlight. These kinds are remarkable for the great length and slenderness of the legs, which they part with readily when handled! Most of these long-legged species are brightly coloured with black and yellow stripes or spots. In their native haunts these creatures may be seen darting about after their prey in the sun, heedless of the notice they attract by reason of their pretty colours. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... Hello! Where's the fire? Unless I'm much mistaken, young feller, there's a first-class row goin' on outside our bloomin' cafe. No, no, don't you butt in among Arabs as though you was strollin' down Edgware Road on a Saturday night, an' get mixed up in a coster rough-an'-tumble. These long-legged swine would knife you just for the fun of it. Keep full an' by, an' let any son of a gun who comes too near have it ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... of the Bronx River, only a pair or two of spotted sandpipers remain throughout the nesting period, content to lay their eggs in some retired spot in the corner of a field, where there is the least danger to them and to the fluffy balls of long-legged down which later appear and scurry about. The great horned owl and the red-tailed hawk formerly nested in the park, but the frequent noise of blasting and the building operations have driven them to more isolated places, and of their relatives there remain only the little screech ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... grown-up; if only they could have stayed little for ever! In another four years even Don-Don would be grown-up—Don-Don who was such a long time getting older that at fourteen, only two years ago, he had been capable of sitting in her lap, a great long-legged, flumbering puppy, while mother and son rocked dangerously together in each other's arms, like two children, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... the wrong time. In most instances, the sharp points of the rowels should be filed or rubbed off, for they are seldom required for more than to rouse a horse at a fence, or turn him suddenly away from a vehicle in the street. Sharp spurs may be left to jockeys. Long-legged men can squeeze their horses so hard, that they can dispense with spurs; but short-legged men need them at the close of a run, when a horse begins to lumber carelessly over his fences, or with a horse inclined to refuse. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... A long-legged "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig, canopied in leather and curtained clumsily. The Yankee laughed at the heavy straight shafts and the mule that drew the volante, as the gig was called, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... use. It was a very trying time. I can remember how I tried to kick myself loose, but failed. Sometimes I would kick the barn and sometimes I would kick a large hole in the horizon. Finally I was rescued by a neighbor who said he didn't want to see a good barn kicked into chaos just to save a long-legged boy that wasn't worth over ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... "Anything up yet?" were for so long answered in the negative, that it seemed the day had been in vain. At last the welcome shout rang out, "Injun and deer fight! Everybody run!" We flew, breathless with anticipatory chuckles. We landed on top of the shed, to witness an inspiring scene—one long-legged, six-foot-and-a-half Injun, suitably attired in a plug hat, cutaway coat, breech-clout, and mocassins, grappling in mortal combat a large and very angry deer. The arena and the surrounding prairie were dreaming in a flood of mellow ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... enough to make any one feel that they are not edible, my dear," said Aunt Hannah. "What sort did you get? Not those nasty, tall, long-legged things you ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... you long-legged wooden horse, you!" he chuckled. "We've got something to ride for now! We're going to see Miss Grey Eyes again. There's something besides stick-up men worth a ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... spread their nets, stable-boys were sent with candles to collect them in tins, and next morning, when the gamblers assembled in the pigsty at Roscarna a piece of sheet iron, fired to a dull red heat would be placed in the centre. On this hot surface the long-legged insects were thrown. Naturally they must run or be shrivelled with heat. And the one that ran the furthest was counted the winner. Betting on these unfortunate creatures Jocelyn and his friends spent ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... all begun long ago when he and Edward Barnard, still at college, had met Isabel Longstaffe at the tea-party given to introduce her to society. They had both known her when she was a child and they long-legged boys, but for two years she had been in Europe to finish her education and it was with a surprised delight that they renewed acquaintance with the lovely girl who returned. Both of them fell desperately in ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... in from the hayfield, some in wagons, two astride harnessed work-horses, and one long-legged fellow in chaps on a mower, driving a sweaty team that still had life enough to jump sidewise when they spied Bud's pack by the corral. The stage driver sauntered up and spoke to the men. Bud went over and began to help ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... and to show her what a farm was like. There was the herd of cows, and in a field by themselves the young ones from three months to a year. There were two pretty colts Mr. Manning was raising. And there was a flock of sheep on a stony pasture lot, with some long-legged, awkward-looking lambs who had outgrown their babyhood. Then they espied James weeding ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... been a rich hour, for I mix the marvel of the Boon Children, strange pale little flowers of the American theatre, with my conscious joy in bringing back to my mother, from our forage in New York, a gift of such happy promise as the history of the long-legged Mr. Hamilton and his two Bavarian beauties, the elder of whom, Hildegarde, was to figure for our small generation as the very type of the haughty as distinguished from the forward heroine (since I think our categories really came to no more than those). ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... mail arrived, on horseback. There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... the podorojna being presented by Michael, three post-horses were harnessed to the tarantass. These animals, covered with long hair, were very like long-legged bears. They were small but spirited, being of Siberian breed. The way in which the iemschik harnessed them was thus: one, the largest, was secured between two long shafts, on whose farther end was a hoop carrying tassels and bells; the two others were simply fastened ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... 'I should have thought that would be a "raison de plus," as the French say. But I wish your long-legged friend would come back, even if he were intent upon slitting my weazand for my attention to the widow. He is not a man to flinch from his liquor, I'll warrant. Curse this Wiltshire dust that ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... opposite ends, sat two young people—one of them a rosy-cheeked girl, in the bloom of early youth, with a head of rebellious brown hair. She had been reading a book held open in her hand. The other was a long-legged, lean, shy young man, of apparently twenty-three or twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. From the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was clear that he had ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Huntingdon!" Diana spoke quickly. "He knew him when he was a long-legged, red-headed boy of fourteen. My father was his guide down Bright Angel trail. Dad always said that he never met as interesting a human being ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the Rio Atabapo; the constitution of the atmosphere, the colour of the waters, and the form of the trees that cover the shore. You no longer suffer during the day the torment of mosquitos; and the long-legged gnats (zancudos) become rare during the night. Beyond the mission of San Fernando these nocturnal insects disappear altogether. The water of the Orinoco is turbid, and loaded with earthy matter; and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... and Greg brought out their long-legged rubber boots and got into them with little delay. Then there came a sorting of flies, and the rigging of lines and reels. Within a few minutes the three were ready to ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... work," exclaimed Jack Roupall, spinning the long-legged preacher round and into the midst of the men before he had time to utter a syllable of explanation. The change produced on them by this display of Roupall's dexterity was like magic, for, in an instant, they were to a man convulsed ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... met with the mountain goat, an animal which participates both of the deer and the common goat, but whose flesh is far superior to either. It is gracefully shaped—long-legged and very fleet. One of them, whose fore-leg I had broken with a rifle-ball, escaped from our fleetest horse (Castro's), after a chase of nearly thirty minutes. The mountain goat is found on the great ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... go whirling along in the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel, principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew would be this same long-legged, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... long-legged person with a saturnine countenance. He wore a seersucker coat with a nickel badge pinned ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... the carpenter job!" cried a long-legged youth who had lain thus far in the shade of his own hat, in entire silence and apparent unconsciousness. "It's just what I want ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... to sit still and do nothing," said her father firmly, "so I'll stay at home and write letters." He watched them from the terrace a little later, racing across the lawn, and smiled a little. It was so unlikely that this long-legged family of his would ever really ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... tell you," said the miner who had shot that tall, long-legged, long-horned Mexican steer. "Thar was more of 'em. Wild as buffler. This one wasn't even branded. They're just no man's cattle, ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... princely-looking Afghan traders in long coats and peaked turbans; Waziris, with keen, Jewish faces framed in greasy locks that fell upon their shoulders; the sais from his tail-board shouting ineffectual commands to make way for the Sahib; long-legged fowls, leaping and fluttering up under the pony's nose; pariahs, lazily insolent, almost allowing the wheel to graze thigh-bone or paw, before they condescended to loaf away to a fresh resting-place; and over all an arch of blue, so deep and passionate as to be almost vocal; and pervading all, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... Talbot-Lowry, was a good-looking, long-legged, long-moustached Major, who, conforming beautifully to type, was a soldier, sportsman, and loyalist, as had been his ancestors before him. He had fought in the Mutiny as a lad of nineteen, and had been wounded in the thigh in a cavalry charge in a subsequent fight on the Afghan ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... it isn't crowing) of one of those long-legged Shanghai roosters, awoke him just as the dawn was streaking the sky; and shaking the hay from his dress, Harry went out into ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... perched above old Dicky's shop, had got to look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that 'ere shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t'other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o' a drain, let alone a ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... spoke. "I ain't the boy to let any long-legged son-of-a-gun like Irish hit a gait I can't follow," he dimpled, and took the saddle reluctantly off Toots. "If he can stand it, I ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... said, magnanimously. "It ain't so bad as it might be. You'll be a good deal better off learnin' a good trade than trampin' round the country with the circus. I hope this'll be a lesson to you. You'd better not try to run away ag'in, for it won't be no use. You won't always have that long-legged giant to help you. If I'd done right, I should have had him took up for 'sault and battery. He needn't think because he's eight feet high, more or less, that he can defy the laws of the land. I reckon he got a little skeered of what he done, or he ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... a bird-name. In Europe, "name given, on account of their harsh chattering note, to the long-legged thrushes." ('O.E.D.') The group "contains a great number of birds not satisfactorily located elsewhere, and has been called the ornithological ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... soft snow, and veiled under later snow falls, was a line of irregular hummocks. If one's foot missed a hummock, he plunged down through unpacked snow and usually to a fall. Also, the moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-legged individual. Joy, who was eager now that the two men should stake, and fearing that they were slackening their pace on account of her evident weariness, insisted on taking her turn in the lead. The speed and manner in which she negotiated the precarious footing ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... resulted in the arrival of a genuine product of county Galway, a long-legged, raw-boned hunter, with a wild, frightened eye, quivering, suspicious-looking ears, and an ill-omened name compounded of kill and of kick, which Maurice alone endeavoured to pronounce; also an outside car, very nearly as good as new. This ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dull time of it, poor souls, in the lonely house. Towards the end of December, they subscribed among themselves to buy one of those wonderful Christmas Numbers—presenting year after year the same large-eyed ladies, long-legged lovers, corpulent children, snow landscapes, and gluttonous merry-makings—which have become a national institution: say, the pictorial plum puddings ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... blisters, mustard baths, hot herb teas and fomentations. He told her she would soon be well, but Kitty knew better. On the third day, she asked in a whisper for Jim, but told them first to wash his face and hands with salt water. So the long-legged, bright-eyed boy came and sat by his mother's bed and held her hot hands. As he gazed on her over-bright ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... "That's the long-legged old devil's horse who's put the women up to all this damnation!" he growled as he entered his own office ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... He did not touch his skean. From the table he caught a long four-thonged whip, making it whistle through the air. The long-legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back one pace, trying to conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess what had prompted Kyral's attack, but whatever it was, I must have made some bad mistake and could count myself lucky to get out ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... began the captain, "to start with, the name of my hero is Shavings. Of course he had another name, but that's the one he was always known by, and I've forgotten the right one. He was a long-legged, lanky Vermont farmer, with dank strings of yellow hair hanging about his mild face. This hair gave him his nickname aboard the sealing schooner, Janet Barry, on which he signed as a boat man. How ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... if he had no wish to be burnt, he had nothing for it but to huddle himself in his mantle, whistle for his long-legged steed, mount on its back, and allow himself to be ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... is your own nest, O Great Blue Heron?" asked Phyllis, half laughing at the queer, long-legged bird. ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets

... truth. The "nandon" is a long-legged bird, rather common in the plains of South America, and its flesh, when it is young, is ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... to the trunk is another marked feature. "Long or short legs are mainly racial in origin. Thus, in Europe, the northern, or Teutonic race—namely Anglo-Saxons, North Germans, Swedes, and Danes—are tail; long-legged, and small-headed, while the Alpine, or central European race are short of stature, have short legs and large heads with short necks, thus resembling the Mongolian race in general, with which it ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... long-legged brush-tailed brutes, like a fox upon stilts, which the prefect cozened ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... where is me brooch? I thought all the time the little divvil was afther something. Thieves! Murther!" Confusion in pandemonium now reigned supreme. For one precious moment the air seemed full of long-legged stockings and delicate hands and purses. Luckily, the brooch was found and peace restored at once. And Rose said, "Oh, girls, how could you!" and she begged my pardon and said they did not mean it. And then I made myself very useful and agreeable to these lovely maids, lacing their shoes and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... wicked old woman I am!" said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... front seat of the lead wagon sat stout Molly Wingate and her husband. Little Molly's cart came next. Alongside the Caleb Price wagon, wherein now sat on the seat—hugging a sore-footed dog whose rawhide boots had worn through—a long-legged, barefoot girl who had walked twelve hundred miles since spring, trudged Jed Wingate, now grown from a tousled boy into a lean, self-reliant young man. His long whip was used in baseless threatenings now, for any driver must spare cattle such as these, gaunt and hollow-eyed. Tobacco ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... first endeared her so to the public; the human quality that compelled instinctive response from those who looked at her. So Jean in the loge smiled at Jean on the screen. Then Lite—dear, silent, long-legged Lite!—came loping up, and pushed back his hat with the gesture that she knew so well, and spoke to her and smiled; and a lump filled the throat of Jean in the loge, though she could not have told why. Then Jean on the screen turned and went riding with Lite back down the trail, ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... come not here; Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... smote the broad chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick muscle-pads that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had been added to by curious passers-by—husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen, sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered generations. Imber glanced from one to another, then he spoke aloud ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... answer Iver's letter. Opportunities be like fleas, to be took sharp, or away they goes, they be terrible long-legged. Opportunities only come now and then, and if not caught are lost past recall. 'Twas so wi' Temperance Noakes, who might a' had the chimbley-sweep if she'd a kissed him when he axed. But she said, Wipe and wash ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... her grow up from a rangy, long-legged, stringy-haired leetle colt think more o' what she is than what she looks like, but now that you mention it, I'll lay there ain't a Jane this side o' the border and mighty few above it that can give her odds on looks. And there ain't a ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... was accepted; the horse was taken in charge by a long-legged lad of fifteen, without hat or shoes; and the whole ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... over he sauntered out into the market square, where the horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first—tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought them to maturity. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... medium-sized herd—vast males, mothers, old-maid elephants, long-legged and ungainly, young males just learning their strength and proud of it beyond words, and many calves. They ranged all the way in size from the great leader, who stood ten feet and weighed nearly nine thousand pounds, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... Robert Robin. "I barely remember how she looked. But she was not so bad looking! She had pretty eyes, and a charming manner, but what she could see about that long-legged Percival ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field

... to your long-legged friend, but—it's his eyes, man! It's his eyes! They ain't human! I seen a man like him once what went mad from the heat an'—" he lowered his voice, "they found him at his mate's throat a-sucking of ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... nogu doghe—or people who lived where the pintado fish (orari in Bororo) was to be found. The Bororos spoke of only three other tribes: the Kaiamo doghe (the Chavantes Indians), their bitter enemies; the Ra rai doghe—the long-legged people—ancient cave-dwellers, once the neighbours of the Bororos, but now extinct; and the Baru gi raguddu doghe—a name better left untranslated—applied to a ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the day, and Nanking wanted some food. The Susquehannocks produced nuts, venison, fish, hominy, and succotash. Their formerly savage countenances beamed confidence and consideration. Nanking expressed his wishes by signs. He wanted a great, long-legged, long-winged bird, a stork, to carry back alive to New Amstel. The Indian chiefs conferred, and finally replied, by signs and assurances, that they had such a bird, but that it would take two whole days to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... me of the hard-won earnings of years of ingenious industry was brought about by the baseness of a man who was concerned with me in purchasing drugs for exportation to the Confederate States. Unluckily, I was obliged to employ as my agent a long-legged sea-captain from Maine. With his aid, I invested in this enterprise about six thousand dollars, which I reasonably hoped to quadruple. Our arrangements were cleverly made to run the blockade at Charleston, and we were to sail on a certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... European names causes a Babelonish confusion of ideas, enough to disturb the equanimity of a "grisly saint;" and, with all humility, I disclaim having any pretensions to that character. I have frequently heard a long-legged, sallow-looking backwoodsman talk of having come lately from Paris, or Mecca, when instead of meaning the capital of La grande nation, or the city of "the holy prophet," he spoke of some town containing a few hundred inhabitants, situated in the backwoods of Kentucky, or amidst the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... dogs, had sent us this present from York, believing that it would be very useful to us both on our journey and after we had arrived at our destination. The dogs were splendid creatures—a dozen mastiffs and twenty sheep-dogs of that long-legged and long-haired breed which looks like a cross between the greyhound and the St. Bernard. The smallest of the mastiffs was above twenty-seven inches high at the loins; the sheep-dogs not much smaller; ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... can remember Mrs. Barrymore at that time very well—-wonderfully handsome and a marvellously cheery manner. Richard and I both loved her greatly, even though it were in secret. Her daughter Ethel I remember best as she appeared on the beach, a sweet, long-legged child in a scarlet bathing-suit running toward the breakers and then dashing madly back to her mother's open arms. A pretty figure of a child, but much too young for Richard to notice at that time. In after-years the child ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... always belonged to Norah, He had been given to her as a foal, when Norah used to ride a round little black sheltie, as easy to fall off as to mount. He was a beauty even then, Norah thought; and her father had looked approvingly at the long-legged baby, with his fine, well-bred head. "You will have something worth riding when that fellow is fit to break in, my girlie," he had said, and his prophecy had been amply fulfilled. Mick Shanahan said he'd never put a leg ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... come by all means," repeated the Doctor. "Isn't it nearly dinner-time? I am starving. I have been twenty miles round the country to-day, and when I come in I find that long-legged fellow Morris philandering away, and have to listen to his vacuous nonsense for an hour. Whatever brings him here so often? He ought to have something better to do with his time than to be idling it away over afternoon tea. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... a beautiful cat there was no doubt about it. While I was with Jenkins I thought cats were vermin, like rats, and I chased them every chance I got. Mrs. Jenkins had a cat, a gaunt, long-legged, yellow creature, that ran whenever we looked ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... is surely March, for the lambs are still long-legged—there one has dropped on its knees and is digging at the udder of the passive ewe with that ferocious little gluttony which we know so well; another lamb relieves its ear's first itching with its hind hoof—you know the grotesque movement—and the field is full of the weird roaming of animal life, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... kin ax him all you wanter." Tim giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth. Tim was lathy—long-legged, long-armed, with an ashy-black complexion and very big eyes. As he stood fondling the Flower's nose, he glared disdain of all the other candidates, or, rather, of the knots of folk ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... were sitting before the fire, Joan on the bearskin at his feet, he lounging back, long-legged, smoke-veiled, in one of the lacquered chairs. She had been fingering her collar and she kept on fingering it as she spoke and staring straight into the flames, but, at the last, quoting Pierre's words and tone, her voice and face quivered and she looked at him with eyes of mysterious ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... intended, should Bear gain the grove, to smoke him out with it. The truth is, he was putting up a stove in his cabin when the cry of "Bear, bear," interrupted his labors, and he joined the chase, forgetting that he held anything in his hand. He was wiry, lank, and long-legged, with sandy hair that came down straight and thin upon his shoulders, and being without his coat, with pants that reached only half way between his knees and ankles, he cut a ludicrous figure as he straddled ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... his breath. "A long-legged Napoleon the Third, but burnt out, baked, and fire-crackled. And mangy! No wonder he crooks his head to one side. He's got ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... Canonmills, with no richer birthright than thievish fingers and a left hand of surpassing activity. The son of a gamekeeper, he grew up a long-legged, red-headed callant, lurking in the sombre shadow of the Cowgate, or like the young Sir Walter, championing the Auld Town against the New on the slopes of Arthur's Seat. Kipping was his early sin; but the sportsman's instinct, born of his father's trade, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... seemed, was riding that morning also, for when Ralston led his brown mare saddled and bridled from the stable, Smith was tightening the cinch on his long-legged gray—the horse he had taken from the Englishman. The Schoolmarm, in her riding clothes, ran down ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... "Now, stranger," said a long-legged Yankee, who, with his boots on the stove—-the day had got raw and cold—and his knees considerably higher than his head, was gazing intently at me, "'I guess I've fixed you." I was taken aback by the sudden identification of my business, when he continued, "Yes, I've just ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness. Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder sister, held that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... do know him; he's a yaller dog, a long-legged thing with a short tail, and he goes about with a girl, and he's called Dick. I shouldn't have said I know'd him if ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... [Footnote: Michaux, 215, 236; Collins, I., 24.] The settlers possessed horses and horned cattle, but only a few sheep, which were not fitted to fight for their own existence in the woods, as the stock had to. On the other hand, slab-sided, long-legged hogs were the most plentiful of domestic animals, ranging in great, half-wild ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... while one of the hearers, carried away with enthusiasm at the prospect of listening to his friend's eloquence, discharged his revolver at the roof, scattering confusion amongst a legion of long-legged spiders that occupied the dusty ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... wi' that idee," said Teague, slipping into a chair and smiling curiously, "but I disremember mostly what 'twuz about. Ever'thing is been a-pesterin' me lately, an' a man that's hard-headed an' long-legged picks up all sorts er foolish notions. I wish you'd take keer this pickle-bottle, Cap," he continued, drawing a revolver from his coat-tail pocket and placing it on the table. "I uv bin afeard ever sence I started out that the blamed thing 'ud go off ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... grass and here and there were big yellow patches of moss. At the foot of one hill a stream wends its way through the drooping boughs of the stunted shrubs that grow on its edges, and loses itself in a quiet pond where long-legged insects disport themselves on the leaves of the water-lilies. The sun beat down on us. The gnats rubbed their wings together and bent the slender ends of the reeds with the weight of their tiny bodies. We were alone in the tranquillity ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... roof and walls were white as the robe which our white brother folds around his breast, and a cool, refreshing air entered the building through the windows which opened on the river. Around the room—which was four steps of a long-legged man each way—were hung skins, and skulls, and scalps of otters—trophies of the wars which the beavers had waged with that nation. In one corner of the room sat a beaver-woman, combing the heads of some little beavers, whose ears she boxed ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... Senor Quiero had fires of blazing pine knots at the door. When the procession passed we noted its elements. In front was the band of ten boys; men with curious standards mounted on poles followed. The first of these standards was a figure, in strips of white and pink tissue paper, of a long-legged, long-necked, long-billed bird, perhaps a heron; next stars of colored paper, with lights inside; then were large globes, also illuminated, three of white paper and three in the national colors—red, white, and green. Grandest of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... of robust constitution: he was narrow-chested, round-shouldered, and long-legged. He wore a silk cord for a tie, had no trace of a waistcoat, and his boots were worse than mine, with the heels trodden down on one side. He stared, hardly even blinking, with a strained expression, as though he were just going to catch something, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... further slope to the Castle a few minutes later, he was hailed from behind and reined in to look back. A long-legged figure detached itself from a clump of trees that shadowed the bailiff's house and ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... furnished me with a solemn, short-bodied, long-legged animal—a sort of animated counting-house stool, as it were—which he called a "Morgan" horse. He told me who the brute was "sired" by, and was proceeding to tell me who he was "dammed" by, but I gave him to understand ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... the only inmates of the forest, for they had scarcely progressed a quarter of a mile beyond the spot where the snake had been encountered when a great creature like a long-legged cat, but standing over thirty inches high at the shoulder, suddenly emerged from the tangled underwood and halted abruptly, staring at the approaching strangers for a few seconds before, with an angry snarl, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... made with the ubiquitous Cash for burros and ponies before the party left for the West, there was little or no delay in getting started. The girls uttered delighted exclamations as their little animals were led up to the hotel steps by a long-legged Mexican who was to accompany the party to Steer Wells, where the ponies were to be abandoned and a permanent camp formed. From that point the dash into the alkali would be made ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... the wrinkles at the corner of his steely-blue eyes followed suit. It was a way of his when trying not to smile. Then Bright was heard to say that where the laws were silent, wise lawyers should he likewise, an epigram which long-legged Lieutenant Blake, of Camp McDowell, was delightedly and explosively repeating for the benefit of certain of the ladies looking on from among the cedars, even as 'Tonio appeared. Then no crier was needed to proclaim silence ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... hermit, 'Accept his terms at once. And send off the long-legged man with the letter. He will take it in no ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... to a group of long-legged, slender-billed, and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order Limicolae. More than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many of them are equally ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... too often seen in the daytime—the wild beasts of the wilderness roaming at liberty through the desert waste. Sometimes it was an ugly camel, then it was a long-necked and disproportioned giraffe, and then again a long-legged ostrich hastening away with its wings outspread. They all appeared to scorn him, and he had already taken his resolve to open his eyes no more, and to give himself up to his fate, without allowing these horrible and strange ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... may call it learning—'tis mother-wit. No one else sees the lady-moon sit On the sea, her nest, all night, but the owl, Hatching the boats and the long-legged fowl. When the oysters gape to sing by rote, She crams a pearl down each stupid throat. Howlowlwhitit that's wit, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald

... it," she answered, not able to forbear smiling; "but sit down then, you great, long-legged fellow, you put me out of conceit with this room; you make the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... was used to cranes, for in the plough's furrow on the dry land these long-legged birds walked close behind, not the least afraid in the Mikado's dominions. For who would hurt the white-breasted creature, that every one called the Honourable Lord Crane? The graceful birds seemed to love to be near man, when he worked in ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... Clem's hand and was holding it tight, and he was already rather out of breath, as Clem was walking fast—very fast for him—and he has always been a long-legged chap for his age, thin and wiry, too; whereas, in those days—though, thank goodness, he is growing like a house on fire now—Peterkin was as broad as he was long. So to keep up with Clement's strides ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... nor pig nor any other creature such as in the meanest savage villages of other times might have been found upon the surface of the earth. But, undisturbed and bold, numbers of a most extraordinary fowl—a long-legged, red-necked fowl, wattled and huge of beak—gravely waddled here and there or perched singly and in solemn rows upon ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... assist, and dodged this way and that over the potato rows and the cabbages. Every now and then they ran together, when he caught her for a moment and kissed her. The first pig was got back promptly; the second with some difficulty; the third a long-legged creature, was more obstinate and agile. He plunged through a hole in the garden hedge, and into ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... married, the second time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... is a harsh croak—and you never see him as he utters it out of the solemn upper darkness; so that there is often a mystery about this voice of the night, which one never thinks of associating with the quiet, patient, long-legged fisherman that one may see any summer day along the borders of lonely lake or stream. A score of times I have been asked by old campers, "What is that?" as a sharp, questioning Quoskh-quoskh? seemed to tumble down into the sleeping lake. Yet they knew the great blue heron perfectly—or ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... Well, to be sure! Wonders I hadn't seen that afore now. That's it though, 'pend upon it; right up in the clunch o' that bough." Before I could say a word he was half-way up amongst the branches, long-legged and struggling, to put the bird ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... all used to end In such kind confidential parley As may to you kind Fortune send, You long-legged Charlie, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... resembling a cabriolet, but of the most primitive and rude construction; the harness is profusely ornamented with brass, and the horse's hend decorated with tufts and tassels and dangling bobs of scarlet and yellow worsted. I had for calasero, a tall, long-legged Andalusian, in short jacket, little round-crowned hat, breeches decorated with buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... about from one point to another in his long-legged boots, calling off sharp, imperious orders, and flourishing a revolver in his hand. There was no danger from the revenue men. The guards had all been "greased," and were watching to give the alarm if their chief arrived. The gun was for those silent workmen ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... by reason of the fact that there was no church in San Pasqual, served, nevertheless, as a bulwark against the assaults of vice and vulgarity which, in a frontier town, are very thinly veiled. As a child she was neither precocious nor shy. From a rather homely, long-legged gangling girl of fourteen she emerged apparently by a series of swift transitions into a young lady at sixteen, giving promise of a beauty which lay, not so much in her physical attractions, which were generous, but in that easily discernible ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... in the stables—those of the captain and the two strangers, my own which was in a state of prostration, and a thin long-legged beast whose body was ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... walked out again onto the porch. The girl standing there was as dark as her mother but slim and long-legged and vividly beautiful. ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... had expressed himself, after the first few words, in his own language, and between them they were now making hubbub enough to bring the old house down about their ears. Up came the padrona to see the fun; up came her fat husband, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers; and her long-legged sons, and her tousle-headed daughters, and the maid-servant, and the cook, and the ostler—the whole establishment, in fact, collected at the open folding-doors, and watched with delight the progress of this battle ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... of hands and eyes, the string of superlatives—the bellissimos, santissimos, gloriosissimos, and maravigliosissimos, with which they expressed their applause and delight. I stood in the back-ground of this strange scene, supported on one of the long-legged chairs which V—— placed for me against a pillar, at once amazed, diverted, and disgusted by this display of profaneness and superstition, till the heat and crowd overcame me, and I was obliged to leave the church. I shall ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... does har duty by the Union. We'll go to the death for har just so long as she's in the right, but not a d——d step if she arn't,' said the long-legged native I have introduced ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... and mad and bad it was," a theme for the moralist, the conscientious objector, the Army reformer, the social reformer, the statistician. Yet perhaps even their solemn faces might relax to-day at the sight of a long-legged Airedale puppy marching at the head of the battalion to which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various

... the wild, an old cow moose, black and ungainly, and her long-legged, awkward calf. Yet they supplied the detail that was missing. They were the one thing needed to complete the picture—the crowning touch that revealed this land as it was—the virgin wilderness where the creatures of the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... pains when he got home to imitate the rain, as he best could; added his child's luxury of a rainbow; put in the very bush under which he had taken shelter, and the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and long-legged fisherman, in the courtly short breeches which were the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... architecture that we count England foreign. The constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... excitement, I looked with some little curiosity on the two long-legged graceful-looking spotted creatures, each with a peculiar far-off look in its eyes, as if it were trying to pierce the walls and catch sight of the antelopes it was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... wearing a billycock hat to church, and people will put up with it from a countryman of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show. But in a Scotch village, if you whistle in the street on a Lord's Day, though it be a Moody and Sankey tune, you will be likely to get, as I did, an admonition from some long-legged, grizzled elder: ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... school mourned the long-legged boy's departure except his little friend Vashti, now a well-grown girl of twelve, very straight and slim and with big dark eyes. She gave him when he went away the little Testament she had gotten as a prize, and which was one ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page



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