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Rumpled   /rˈəmpəld/   Listen
Rumpled

adjective
1.
In disarray; extremely disorderly.  Synonyms: disheveled, dishevelled, frowzled, tousled.  "Powder-smeared and frowzled" , "A rumpled unmade bed" , "A bed with tousled sheets" , "His brown hair was tousled, thick, and curly"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rumpled" Quotes from Famous Books



... Suppose Cinderella had rumpled the prince's hair all over his forehead, how would he have liked it? Suppose the Sleeping Beauty, when the king's son with a kiss set her and all the old clocks agoing in the spell-bound castle—suppose the young minx had looked up and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... nature shone on her cheeks; her body was loosely attired, without stays or jumps, so that her breasts had uncontrolled liberty to display their beauteous orbs, which they did as low as her girdle; a thin covering of a rumpled muslin handkerchief almost hid them from the eyes, save in a few parts, where a good-natured hole gave opportunity to the naked breast to appear. Her gown was a satin of a whitish colour, with about a dozen little silver spots upon it, so artificially interwoven at great ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard the train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... sure, a presentable member of any bar, for a smudge detracted considerably from the appearance of one side of his face, his clothes were rumpled and covered with black dust, and his hands were black. But I had rarely seen him so calm. He recrossed his legs, peered into the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then asked, as quietly as though he were soliciting an opinion ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... set together; but what was their surprise to find the poor little brown Lark sitting on them with rumpled feathers, ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... and some one else had evidently slept there besides herself, for the sheet and pillow were rumpled and there was a half-burnt candle and a man's watch-chain on the small table beside it. Wherever she was then, Ian was there too, so that she was at a loss to understand her ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... emergency. This mighty jerk had carried him off his feet. He was unstrung and panic-stricken. At any rate this man had promised help. He would take it. He put the paper and envelope carefully into his pocket, smoothed out his rumpled coat, and going over to Mason touched ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... smoothed out some rumpled feathers and was most provokingly slow about it. "When I left here," he began at last, "I flew straight up to Farmer Brown's house, as I said I would. I flew all around it, but all I saw was that horrid Black Pussy on the back doorsteps, and she looked at me so hungrily ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess

... am, Happy," answered a muted voice. "I'm in the oven. Can't I come out now?" I opened the door to the big oven an' there she was, wrapped in a coat an' all rumpled up as if she'd been sleepin'. "Who put you in ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... bounds and, without the preliminary of knocking, into his sister's tiny, semi-darkened bedroom, his breathing suddenly filling it. She sprang from her little chintz-covered bed, where she had flung herself across its top, her face and wrapper rumpled with sleep. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... and retired to his room, but not to bed. He disarranged the bed-clothes and rumpled the pillow; then walked softly to and fro in his slippers until morning. On the following day he made no attempt to visit his newly acquired property, but strolled about the harbor, or stood, in sheltered and, therefore, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... cried Nelly. Then she rumpled my hair all over my forehead and ran laughing out of ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... said, it wasn't really a row. I just pleaded with Nita last night to smooth down the girls' rumpled feathers, and to make it clear to them that she didn't want the star part in the picture any more than she wanted any other woman's husband or sweetheart.... Just a friendly warning—" Sprague drew a deep breath. "And that's ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... fat young man plays with a pond. The wind has caught itself in a tree. The pale sky seems to be rumpled, As though it had run out of makeup. On long crutches, bent nearly in half And chatting, two cripples creep across the field. A blond poet perhaps goes mad. A little horse stumbles over a lady. A fat man is stuck to a window. A boy wants to visit a soft woman. A gray clown puts on ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcades and overhead viaducts, cross balconies and catwalks which spanned the canyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread, now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a great rumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of the roof was of opaque alumite, dark patches, alternating with the great glassite panes which ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... platform to the spot where he had fallen; his sharp eye saw something white beneath the overturned music-stand. It did not take long to reveal the missing partitur. All was there, not a leaf missing, though some rumpled and soiled. When Pobloff had tumbled into the aisle, miraculously escaping a dislocated neck, the music and the rack had kept him company. Curiously he fingered the manuscript. Yes, there was the fatal spot! He gazed at the strange combination of instruments on the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Your riding-dress will do for the first visit. Nor let your boots be over clean. I have always told you the consequence of attending to the minutiae, where art (or imposture, as the ill-mannered would call it) is designed—your linen rumpled and soily, when you wait upon her—easy terms these—just come to town—remember (as formerly) to loll, to throw out your legs, to stroke and grasp down your ruffles, as if of significance enough to be careless. What though the presence ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... chorus. "This hostess who so completely ignores us must be called to order. Come, M——, take pen and paper and write her some strong epigrams; we must teach this princess of Germany how to live. French officers and conquerors sleeping in rumpled sheets, and using soiled napkins! What an outrage!" M. M was only too faithful an interpreter of the unanimous sentiments of these gentlemen; and under the excitement of the fumes of these Hungarian wines wrote ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... beyond his years. In mind, however, he was the youngest there, and his manner was often distressingly juvenile. He wore old clothes which looked as if they had not been brushed for some weeks, and his linen was of dubious cleanliness, and about his rumpled collar there floated a half-tied black necktie. Mike, who hated all things that reminded him of the casualness of this human frame, never was at ease in his presence, and his eye turned in disgust from sight of the poor old gentleman's trembling and ossified ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... sitting in the roadside dust, Lady's head in her lap. She was smoothing lovingly the soft rumpled fur; and was trying hard not to cry over the inert warm mass of gold-and-white fluffiness which, two minutes earlier, had been a beautiful thoroughbred collie, vibrant with life and fun ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... sure of herself and had suppressed the panic which his sudden appearance had produced in her. He rumpled his hair, a gross imitation, did she but know it, of one of his chief's mannerisms and she observed that his hair was very thick and inclined to curl. She saw also that he was passably good looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose and a ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... of the village Marcia put down the pails of berries by a large flat stone and sat down for a moment to tidy herself. The lacing of one shoe had come untied, and her hair was rumpled by exercise. But she could not sit long to rest, and taking up her burdens was soon upon ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... as you ordered - I wish the print may arrive without being rumpled: it is difficult to convey mezzotintos; but if this is ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... compassionate darkness she was giving way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his own springy ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found what was going on around him unusual. He had an air, too, of having a joke all to himself. George, speaking aside ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... adjusted his collar and tie, which had become rumpled, and unlocked the door. At once the head ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... curiously. "And—me, Aunt Caro?" he asked with an odd note in his voice. Miss Craven glanced for a moment at the big figure sprawled in the chair near her, then looked back at the fire with pursed lips and wrinkled forehead, and rumpled her hair ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... the station, Sarah?" Sarah, stretched in luxurious comfort on the porch rug, raised a rumpled head above her ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... stay the greater part of the next day, but he took an earlier train. His sister was still laid up; she thought she must have taken cold in her jaw; her husband, rumpled, unshaven, with a shawl over his shoulders, cowered about the cook-stove for the heat. He began to hate this poverty and suffering, to long for escape from it to the life which at that distance seemed so rich and easy and pleasant; he trembled ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... neighbors contract the habit of "running in" to see one another. Were the truth known, many a housekeeper, deep in pie-making and bread-kneading, would gladly give her handsomest loaf for two minutes in which to smooth her rumpled hair and change her ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... again emphatically as a sort of mental dismissal of the command, and crawled carefully past Sister and lifted a flap of the canvas cover. A button—the last button—popped off his pink apron and the sleeves rumpled down over his hands. It felt all loose and useless, so Buddy stopped long enough to pull the apron off and throw it beside Sister before he crawled under the canvas flap and walked down the spokes of a rear ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... e're Chrysis cou'd make a return, she snatcht a pocket-glass from her, and after she had practis'd all her looks, to try if any appear'd less charming than before, she took hold of her petticoats that were a little rumpled with lying on, and immediately ran to a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of life—he guessed that should be his age—to find himself really taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... What made Putois ever-present and familiar to us, what interested us in him, was that the remembrance of him was associated with all the objects about us. Zoe's dolls, my school books, in which he had many times rumpled and besmeared the pages; the garden wall, over which we had seen his red eyes gleam in the shadow; the blue porcelain jar that he cracked one winter's night, unless it was the frost; the trees, the streets, the benches—everything recalled Putois, the children's Putois, a local and mythical ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France

... threw a rumpled paper toward Flint, who grasped it convulsively. His hand touched a bell-rope, and before the bell had ceased tinkling, a heavy measured tramp came through the entry. Four policemen entered the room in single ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... slender slip of a thing, a trifle too tall for her years, perhaps, yet with no lack of development apparent in the slim, rounded figure. Her coarse home-made dress of dark calico fitted her sadly, while her rumpled hair, from which the broad-brimmed hat had fallen, possessed a reddish copper tinge where it was touched by the sun. Mr. Hampton's survey did not increase his desire for more intimate acquaintanceship, yet he recognized anew ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... and raised his prayer-book to read the committal. The long black box—the boy was very tall—was being lowered gently, tenderly. Suddenly the heroic vision of Santiago vanished and he seemed to see again the rumpled head and the alert, eager, rosy face of the boy playing football—the head that lay there! An iron grip caught his throat, and if a sound had come it would have been a sob. Poor little boy! Poor little hero! To exchange all life's sweetness for that fiery glory! Not ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... to a slight depression on the side of the bed. A white linen coverlet was rumpled as though ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... not till she saw him actually standing there before her with his hair rumpled and a large smut on the tip of his nose, that Sally really understood how profoundly troubled she had been about this young man, and how vivid had been that vision of him bobbing about on the waters of the Thames, a cold and unappreciated corpse. She was a girl ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... fortunately in one piece, and they dove into them with little ceremony. The three presented themselves flushed of cheek and somewhat rumpled as to hair, but properly gowned and apologetic, just as grace was ended. To be late for grace only meant one demerit; the first course came higher, and the second higher still. Punishment ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a tall man in a rumpled black suit; he had knobby wrists and big, awkward hands; black hair flecked with gray, and a harsh, bigoted face. Allan remembered him. Frank Gutchall. Lived on Campbell Street; a religious fanatic, and ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper

... His shining hair rumpled thickly about his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and Cummins, in turn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful kickings and ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... boisterous child was Ann, And very far from good; She did not play the pleasant games That little children should; With rumpled hair and dresses torn She came home every day; In vain mamma said, "Ann, pray learn To ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle

... We was sitting inside 'ere with scythes, and pitchforks, and such-like things handy, when we see 'im come in without 'is hat. His eyes were staring and 'is hair was all rumpled. He called for a pot o' ale and drank it nearly off, and then 'e sat gasping and 'olding the mug between 'is legs and shaking 'is 'ead at the floor till everybody 'ad left off talking ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... washing dishes. Jane, who was helping her, looked frightened, but Anne only smiled. That was one step toward Miss Drayton. During the days that followed, Anne was a very naughty girl. She came late to breakfast, with rough hair and dangling ribbons; she tore her aprons; she rumpled her frocks; her usually tidy bed was in valleys and mountains; her tasks were neglected or ill done. She was reproved; she was punished. But she accepted each reproof ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... of John. At supper time, he approached the house warily. His face was flushed, his school clothes begrimed and rumpled, and a bruise on his right shin forced a perceptible limp as he walked. He had been practicing with the "Tigers," and the scrimmage had been most exciting. Silvey—who had not been put to bed—had bumped into Red Brown in a manner which the latter regarded as unnecessarily rough. There had been a ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... who was a mother of many, hardly knew which to pity more; Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her antimacassars rumpled by a young Jackanapes; or the boy himself, for being brought up by an ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... puffed and bleeding, and his chin was bloody. Sundry red and dark marks disfigured his usually clear complexion. His eyes were blazing, and his hair rumpled down over ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... turned, saw the rumpled, lifeless-looking heap of blue linen, turned back toward the river, then once more to the motionless Miss Jones, lying face downward in the sand. And then the girl who thought life not worth living, delaying her own preference, with rather reluctant feet—feet clad in pink satin slippers—turned ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... something of the sort in his own mind, for as he forsook the sink, Mrs. Kukor leading him, he shook a rumpled head at her. "Barber's bigger'n a barn!" he ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... suit and with his hair rumpled was standing on a ten-foot plot of grass contemplating a bed-tester and four bed-posts that leaned up against the palings in the embrace of a bedstead turned upon its side, and Viola in the upper window was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... Karyl's hair was rumpled; his eyes darkly ringed, and the line of his lips close set. Benton glanced out of his window. Across the gardens the wall was growing blanker, as lighted panes fell dark. One window, which he knew was Cara's, still showed a parallelogram of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... examined at Calais: but these silly cuckolds thrust in their noses everywhere. As soon as ever he saw your coat, he fell in love with it. I immediately perceived he was a fool; for he fell down upon his knees, beseeching me to sell it him. Besides being greatly rumpled in the portmanteau, it was all stained in front by the sweat of the horses. I wonder how the devil he has managed to get it cleaned; but, faith, I am the greatest scoundrel in the world, if you would ever have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... to walk the streets in decent clothes. I have been obliged to procure and put on pantaloons, jacket, colored cravat and coarse linen, before attempting to go outdoors."—Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 281. "Our dandies let their moustaches grow long; while they rumpled their hair, dirtied their hands and donned nasty garments. Our philosophers and literary men wore big fur caps with long fox-tails dangling over their shoulders; some dragged great trailing sabers along the pavement—they were taken for Tartars.... In public ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... beneath the fierce glare and the intense heat of the gas, were women of all sorts, dressed in dark, worn, rumpled woolens, women in black tulle caps, women in black paletots, women in caracos worn shiny at the seams, women in fur tippets bought of open-air dealers and in shops in dark alleys. And in the whole assemblage not one of the youthful faces was set off by a collar, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... neat-fitting evening dress, which was so bizarre here in the dingy receiving room, redolent of bloody tasks. Evidently he had been out to some dinner or party, and when the injured man was brought in had merely donned his rumpled linen jacket with its right sleeve half torn from the socket. A spot of blood had already spurted into the white bosom of his shirt, smearing its way over the pearl button, and running under the crisp fold of the shirt. The head nurse was too tired and listless to be impatient, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... over again, while they swung their booted legs under the seats. One of them came up to the hearth, and clapped the crouching Yakob on his back for fun, but it hurt. It was a resounding smack. Yakob scratched himself and rumpled his hair, unable ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... back of her neck, Rose's head looked more like that of a dashing young cavalier than a modest little girl's. High-heeled boots tilted her well forward, a tiny muff pinioned her arms, and a spotted veil, tied so closely over her face that her eyelashes were rumpled by it, gave the last touch of absurdity to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... present afternoon it was really very hot. Professor Valeyon, occupying his usual position, had nearly finished his second pipe. He had thrown off the light linen duster he usually wore, and sat with his waistcoat open, displaying a somewhat rumpled, but very clean white shirt-bosom; and his sturdy old neck was swathed in the white necktie which was the only visible relic of his ministerial career. He had covered his bald head with a handkerchief, for the double purpose of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... be surprised if she could see how I have treated one of her masterpieces,' said she, as she straightened her crushed hat, and arranged her hair with those quick little deft pats of the palm with which women can accomplish so much in so short a time. Rumpled finery sets the hands of every woman within sight of it fidgeting, so Maude joined in at the patting and curling and forgot ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... ahead so abruptly that the clinging Nicky dragged Marie Louise from her saddle backward. He tried to swing her to the pommel of his own, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled. She was so rumpled and so furious, and he so frightened, that he left her and spurred after her horse, brought him back, and bothered her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... and Clarence began rubbing tell-tale streaks from their countenances with their rumpled cottas, and ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... was his appearance now to that which it presented on his issuing from the mansion. His coat torn to ribbons, his hat without a crown, his majestic frill rumpled and bloody, and his waistcoat without a single button left wherewith to restrain the exuberance of his linen. All his domestics were eager in their inquiries and offers of service; and Fox was so overpowering in his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... companion bowed, and Nikky surveyed him through his goggles. The same mocking face he remembered, from Karl's visit to the summer palace, the same easy, graceful carriage, the same small mustache. He was in evening dress, and the bosom of his shirt was slightly rumpled. He had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated. He was slightly flushed, his eyes were abnormally bright. He looked, for the moment; rather amiable. Nikky was to learn, later on, how easily his ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... door slowly swung open and Percy Darrow entered. He was smoking a cigarette, his hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets; he was hatless, and his usually smooth hair was rumpled. A tiny wound showed just above the middle of his forehead, from which a thin stream of blood had run down to his eyebrows. He surveyed the room with a humorous twinkle shining behind ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... head, where short, straight, blue-black locks, rumpled and disordered, were piled elfishly around the low brow, was thrown up with the swift movement of some startled furry animal, alert even in the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... a Tuesday morning that Lynde reentered Rivermouth, after an absence of just eight days. He had started out fresh and crisp as a new bank-note, and came back rumpled and soiled and tattered, like that same note in a state to be withdrawn from circulation. The shutters were up at all the shop-windows in the cobble-paved street, and had the appearance of not having been taken down since he left. Everything ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and rumpled her hair on one side and then on ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... from his nose as he got up, his grey muffler hanging from his neck, he hurried to the tribune. Taking off his things and leaving them on a chair below, he stepped up into the tribune with his hair all rumpled, a look of extreme seriousness on his face, and spoke with a voice whose capacity and strength astonished me who had not heard him speak in public before. He spoke very well, with more sequence than Bucharin, and much vitality, and gave his summary ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... at last at his apology. "I couldn't help being late. I've had a day of it." He drew his hands across his forehead, and she noticed that he was in his morning clothes and looked as rumpled and flurried as a man ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... breakfast, and came down apologising for having overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy—her little boy ... she dropped her eyelids ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... there they found Charley at work in the little room that the two men had built. Charley nodded pleasantly when the Cure introduced his brother, but showed no further interest at first. He went on working at the cupboard under his hand. His cap was off and his hair was a little rumpled where the wound had been, for he had a habit of rubbing the place now and then—an abstracted, sensitive motion—although he seemed to suffer no pain. The surgeon's eyes fastened on the place, and as Charley worked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Sam ushered them into the musty law office of Squire Tucker, justice of the peace. The squire was a large, fat man, clothed in rusty black, with a carelessly knotted string tie pendent beneath a rumpled turn-down collar. He had a smooth-shaven, fat face, lighted by shrewd and kindly eyes, which gleamed at you now through, now over, his glasses. When the party entered he was writing, and merely looked up under his big eyebrows long enough to wave ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be sure I shall never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss, whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at the bait, never doubt it. Yes, yes, we shall rub on ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... than them afore now), but I call it tarnation nonsense. I once travelled all through the State of Maine with one of them 'ere chaps. He was as thin as a whippin' post. His skin looked like a blown bladder arter some of the air had leaked out, kinder wrinkled and rumpled like, and his eye as dim as a lamp that's livin' on a short allowance of ile. He put me in mind of a pair of kitchen tongs, all legs, shaft and head, and no belly; a real gander-gutted lookin' critter, as holler as ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... snow With biting winds, and earth grew sere, And sullen clouds drooped low To veil the sadness of a hope deferred: Then rain, rain, rain, incessant rain Beat on the window-pane, Through which I watched the solitary bird That braved the tempest, buffeted and tossed With rumpled feathers down the wind again. Oh, were the seeds all lost When winter laid the wild flowers in their tomb? I searched the woods in vain For blue hepaticas, and trilliums white, And trailing arbutus, the Spring's delight, Starring the withered leaves ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... dreading Thursday she was glad when it came, and quite sorry when it was over. And then it was such a comfort to find that Betty, far from making any objection or difficulty, was pleased to approve of the arrangement, and even when Pennie, who was very untidy, rumpled the anti-macassars and upset the precise position of the drawing-room chairs, she ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... are cold; and she is continually tormented by the smallest children, who caress her and demand kisses, and pull at her veil and her mantle; but she lets them do it, and kisses them all with a smile, and returns home all rumpled and with her throat all bare, panting and happy, with her beautiful dimples and her red feather. She is also the girls' drawing-teacher, and she supports her mother and a brother ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... fellow in amaze, pivoting on his heel. Cupidity and quick understanding enlivened the eyes which in two glances looked Kirkwood up and down, comprehending at once both his badly rumpled hat and patent-leather shoes. "S'help me,"—thickly,—"where'd you drop ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... debt," said Bob, sitting up with rumpled hair and a face like a happy child's. "And there'll be a bit over to play with. What shall we put it into, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... Girl, separating the blooms and pointing out their marvellous colour and construction. She leaned against his shoulder, and watched with breathless interest. As his bare head brought its mop of damp wind-rumpled hair close, she ran her fingers through it, and with ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... so much what he said, as the mere fact that he could say it, which sent a wave of happiness through my maternal old body. So I made for him with my Australian crawl-stroke, and kissed him on both sides of his stubbly old face, and rumpled him up, and went to bed with a touch of silver about the edges of the thunder-cloud still hanging away off ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... where's the harm; he will find few enough comforts where he is going?" And taking up a jug of water that chanced to be near I approached the poor wretch, but ere I could reach him, the man Tom interposed, yet as he eyed me over, from rumpled cravat to dusty Hessians, his manner underwent ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... Tibbie," she presently managed to articulate, "if you look like that I shall die," and as the god of Momus once more seized her, she dragged the quilt into a rumpled pile, and buried her face in it, as if indeed attempting ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... couple! Say, you don't know me. Whaddyou mean, a couple? I can lick a whole regiment of them beerheads with one hand tied behind me an' my feet in a sack." He emerged from the struggle with his shirt, his face very red, his hair rumpled. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... used one of the towels and threw it back upon the rack so that it overhung all the other fresh towels. Grandmother used one end of Rhodora's towel, and carefully folded and put it in place, looking regretfully at its rumpled condition. She took a clean pocket-handkerchief out of her bag. Rhodora ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... to smooth her rumpled locks, and put her somewhat disarranged toilet in order, with swift, firm fingers. While she was thus occupied, there came a tap upon her door. Recognizing it at once, as Davlin's knock, she said, "come," and never once lifted ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... astounded for a minute, making no attempt to remove the traces of the conflict, even when they heard the sound of the masters' approach. They stood convicted, all together; their disordered dress, collars unfastened and rumpled hair, the untasted luncheon, the confusion of the furniture, all told most graphically ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe

... he said, throwing himself into a chair, his blonde hair rumpled and wet. It was the only boyish thing about ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... There was plenty of healthy blood in my veins to keep me warm. Outside of my doublet, my shoulders had no covering but the light mantle, of which I was now glad that I had been unable to rid myself in my swim down the Seine. People who saw me, with my rumpled clothes and shapeless ruff and peasant's cap, probably took me for a younger son who ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... not? Surely a man who risked bail money was justified in seeing that the object of his charity kept faith... Fred Starratt sat down and laughed unpleasantly. What a contempt everybody must have for him! What a contempt he had for himself! He threw himself sprawling his full length upon the rumpled bed. But this time it was not to sleep. Instead, he stared up at the ceiling and puffed cigarette after cigarette until morning flooded the room... At eight o'clock he phoned down to have his breakfast ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... he, "that Monsieur Plantat is right. The probability is in favor of my theory; but probability, in such an affair, is not sufficient; we must have certainty. There happily remains a mode of testing the matter—the bed; I'll wager it is rumpled up." Then addressing the mayor, "I shall need a servant ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... varieties—chiefly maidenhair, walking leaf, and bladder. The view from projecting rocks, in these lofty places, is ever inspiring; the country spread out below us, as in a relief map; the great glistening river winding through its hilly trough; a rumpled country for a few miles on either side, gradually trending into broad plains, checkered with fields on which farmsteads and ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... where the Circus was last week. The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... got an extry coat o' tan follerin' you out o' that theater. When we got out into the entry one o' them fellers that stands 'round steps up to me an' says, 'Ain't your ma feelin' well?' he says. 'Her feelin's has ben a trifle rumpled up,' I says, 'an' that gen'ally brings on the nosebleed,' an' then," said David, looking over Mrs. Bixbee's head, "the feller went an' leaned ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... Seneca amongst the Romans;—Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to pieces;—in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one button the worse, for all you had ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... varied emotions of the succeeding day, lay on his side, in the deep, recuperative sleep of youth whence its energies are drawn and in which its vigors are renewed. His round cheek indented the pillow, his rumpled hair stirred in the breeze that blew in at the window, his arm and his open hand, relaxed, lay along the sheet. Another woman would have straightened the bed-clothes above him; another might have touched his hair or hand; another kissed his cheek. But not even because he was like ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... that I dressed myself last, and how. No doubt that would be all right in essentials. The fortune of the house included a pair of gray-blue watchful eyes that would see to that. But I felt, somehow, as grimy as a Costaguana lepero after a day's fighting in the streets, rumpled all over and dishevelled down to my very heels. And I am afraid I blinked stupidly. All this was bad for the honour of letters and the dignity of their service. Seen indistinctly through the dust of my collapsed universe, the good lady glanced about the room with a slightly amused serenity. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... whom he had exchanged a dozen hurried words. They seemed to refer to him and Susy; but Clarence was too much preoccupied with the fact that the lady was pretty, that her clothes were neat and thoroughly clean, that her hair was tidy and not rumpled, and that, although she wore an apron, it was as clean as her gown, and even had ribbons on it, to listen to what was said. And when she ran eagerly forward, and with a fascinating smile lifted the astonished Susy in her arms, Clarence, in his ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... grey tweeds and with his bathing-towel slung around his shoulders. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and since he had characteristically omitted to provide himself with a hat, his abundant brown hair was rumpled and tossed by the wind, giving him ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... the foot of the stairs. Amidon passed on, now fully aware of having committed a faux pas. Looking back, he saw Miss Scarlett leaning against a newel-post as if in agitation; saw Mr. Cox come up and lead her down; and as she disappeared, leaning weakly on her escort's arm, the mop of rumpled hair faded from his sight like a receding fire-ship. Who could she be? Suddenly Alvord's whispered caution flashed on his mind, and he knew that he had encountered, embraced and repudiated the Strawberry Blonde. He paused for a moment ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... squalid room above stairs, Halloway sat, coatless, with his flannel shirt open on a throat that rose from the swell of his chest as a tower rises from a hill. His hair was rumpled; his whole aspect disheveled; but when he grinned there was the flash of strong teeth as white as a hound's and as even as ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... luxe, a man with flushed face and rumpled hair was stamping nervously up and down. It required a second glance to recognise in him that usually well-groomed and self-possessed individual known as Lord Vernon. Two others were watching his ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... to the house committee. Such conduct could not be tolerated! Having said it, he raised himself again and shuffled over with the letter to Dunwoodie, a lawyer with the battered face of a bulldog and a ruffian's rumpled clothes. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... hair was rumpled and in disorder, her deep-blue eyes looked pathetic owing to the tears she had shed. The young man's whole heart went out to her at a great bound. How beautiful she was! How unlike any other girl he had ever seen! How much he loved her ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... the stain of her tears. Her thick brown hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put on a clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from her waist. Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so fastidious as to her aprons. There was a little strained droop ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... join them; and it chanced that at first no one of them looked in his direction. Mark's back was half-turned; but Joel could see that his brother was lean, and bronzed by the sun. And he wore no hat, and his thick, black hair was rumpled and wild. The white shirt that he wore was open at the throat above his brown neck. His arms were bare to the elbows. His chest was like a barrel. There was a splendor of strength and vigor about the man, in the very ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams

... where were the 'most-grown-up sons? Gone with the sun at sundown; and, instead, there were three cosy little birds, with their heads still rumpled over with down that was not yet pushed off the ends of their real feathers, and a tassel of down still dangling from the tip of each ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... be down at Sealford visiting your mother when your letter arrived; hence my knowledge of its contents. Mrs Leather and her daughter May were then as usual. By the way, what a pretty girl May has become! I remember her such a rumpled up, dress-anyhow, harum-scarum sort of a girl, that I find it hard to believe the tall, graceful, modest creature I meet with now is the same person! Captain Stride says she is the finest craft he ever saw, except ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... even a ditch. The inviolability had been demolished by those who were inviolable. The hand of gendarmes had become as accustomed to the collar of the Representatives as to the collar of thieves: the white tie of the statesman was not even rumpled in the grasp of the galley sergeants, and one can admire the Vicomte de Falloux—oh, candor!—for being dumfounded at ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... Riverside Drive, and that's what makes us late. Now I've got to take the car around to the garage," Mr. Farraday apologized, as he rumpled his leonine mane, fanned himself ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Tex, rolling his eyes upon the spectators. The cat reached out cautiously and stirred it up with his paw; and once more, as his victim dashed for its hole, he caught it in full flight. But now the little mouse, its hair all wet and rumpled, crouched dumbly between the feet of its captor and would not run. Again and again the cat stirred it up, sniffing suspiciously to make sure it was not dead; then in a last effort to tempt it he deliberately lay over on his back and rolled, purring and closing ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... the teacher's uncalled-for remarks. Suddenly Hulda said: "But you must make haste, Effi; why, you look—why, what shall I say—why, you look as though you had just come from a cherry picking, all rumpled and crumpled. Linen always gets so badly creased, and that large white turned down collar—oh, yes, I have it now; you ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... veranda in two jumps and a final leap that left him with his hands entwined in Keith's coat collar. He whirled that astounded person half around and slammed him up against the wall of the ranch-house, rumpled, gasping, with trembling hands that lifted before the menace of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... there, rumpled, winded, flaming with embarrassment. Away up on the bleachers a girl in an Easter hat tittered and a general laugh followed. That laugh brought Smith to himself, but, before he could turn to thank her, Hannah, with a swift, frightened glance at the people, had fled to the Quadrangle. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... before sunrise, the base of the Sentinel 'was swathed in white—night's rumpled draperies not yet tossed aside. As the east glowed it stained the mist pink, and so warmed it that it parted into patches of luminous fluff which floated up and dissolved into crystalline air, and the great lumbering rock stood naked and bold ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... He was a nobly fronted old gentleman, with imposing head, bald at the top but tastefully hung with pale, fluffy side curls. His face was wide and full, smoothly shaven, his cheeks pink, his eyes a pure, pale blue. He was clad in a rumpled linen suit the trousers of which were drawn well up his plump legs above white socks and low black shoes, broad and loose fitting. As the shadows had lengthened and the day cooled he abandoned a palm-leaf fan he had been languidly waving. His face at the moment glowed with ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... at which the nurse, now returned, has knocked. The tired but cheerful-faced young woman, in an unstarched cap and apron, and rumpled gown of Galatea cotton-twill, informs the Doctor that they have telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that the password for the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... Truly is a sight to see. Rumpled, crumpled, soiled, and frayed— Will the quilt be ever made? See the stitches yawning wide— Can it be that ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion took hold of him. "Maybe I will, maybe I will!" he declared. He stared out of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... skin are a religion; women whose clothes are a fine art; women who are free to care only for themselves; to rest, to enjoy, to hear delightful music, and read charming books, and eat delicious food. He doesn't really care about you, with your rumpled blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... But she was now without the grin, and was running a practised eye over what might have been called his production. The hat was jaunty enough, truly a hat of the successful, but all below that, the not-too-fresh collar, the somewhat rumpled coat, the trousers crying for an iron despite their nightly compression beneath their slumbering owner, the shoes not too recently polished, and, more than all, a certain hunted though still-defiant look in the young man's eyes, seemed to speak eloquently ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... lip. A stray breeze slid down the rock wall and rumpled her bright hair. After a long while she said, "Maybe you're right. But America today has, on the whole, a good government. ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... Gracie made gallant efforts to check herself. But her spirit was temporarily quite broken. She stood passively with the tears running down her face while Avery hastily dressed her again and set her rumpled hair to rights. Then again for a few seconds they ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... not believe this explanation. He glanced keenly at his nephew, noting his flushed face and rumpled shirt-bosom, and a shadow of ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... an exaggerated yawn. Her hair was rough and disordered, her frock was rumpled and untidy, her hands were obviously soiled. Miss Blake remarked on none of these things. She laid her bit of needle-work upon the table and quietly passed down ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... was a heavy-set young man, in spectacles and with his hair much rumpled. He peered curiously ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... Edwards, who were standing on the platform of a store opposite, spectators at a distance of what had taken place. After a time Halse came to us, having made a circuit of several buildings from the rear of the Elm House. He had the generally rumpled appearance of a boy who has been roughly handled. Occasionally he nursed and rubbed certain spots upon ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... dogs. A loud bellow was the response, which caused Reynard to take himself off in a hurry. A moment more, and the mother turkey would have shared the fate of the geese. There she lay at the end of her tether, with extended wings, bitten and rumpled. The young ones, roosting in a row on the fence near by, had taken flight on ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... lifted his hat and rumpled his grizzly hair as though fairly caught. Then: "Why, Kitty, you know that I couldn't love any girl more than I do you. Why, you belong to me most as much as you belong to your own father and mother. But, you see—honey—well, you see, we've just naturally got to be nice to strangers, you know." ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... down his nice, dark, rumpled-up head for us to look, but I must say I couldn't see more than one little one all buried ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... how earnest old Joel became as he set forth his new idea of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He rubbed my ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both her hands and went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down the table, lamp and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just what's wanted for a Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old Squire ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... and threw her down on a bench, and punished her well, for if she had rumpled him outside and openly, he rumpled ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... time since the excitement began they had time to think of themselves, and when they looked at each other they could hardly forbear from laughing outright at the picture they presented. They were begrimed with smoke and grease, their clothes were rumpled and soiled, and Bob's sleeve had been split from shoulder to elbow, where it had been caught by a jagged strip of the material ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman

... of a perfect tropical day enfolded the landscape in a silence only occasionally disturbed by the cry of a passing bird. Once a gasoline launch deep-laden with Sunday-starched Americans, snorted by, bound likewise to Fort Lorenzo at the river's mouth; and we lay back in our soft, rumpled khaki and drowsily smiled our sympathy after them. When they had drawn on out of earshot life began to return to the banks and nature again took possession of the scene. Alligators abounded once on this lower Chagres, but they have grown scarce ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... sugary dust, with such effect that she melted the scraps of sweets, and the pockets of her pinafore soon showed two brownish stains. Muche laughed slily to himself. He had his arm about the girl's waist, and rumpled her frock at his ease whilst leading her round the corner of the Rue Pierre Lescot, in the direction of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... Malcolm Sage, Detective," she cried and, jumping up, she perched herself upon the arm of her husband's chair, and rumpled the fair hair, which with her was always a sign of approval. "That's his ring, or Sir James's," she ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... Reining up and turning into the barn-yard, we found the tenant himself being attacked by his bull. I dismounted and diverted the animal's attention. After the beast was securely penned up I was riding homewards more than a little tired, rumpled and heated and very eager for ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... and searched it with the greatest anxiety. It was in terrible disorder. The coat and waistcoat which Forester wore at the ball were crammed in at the top; and underneath appeared unfolded linen, books, boots, maps, shoes, cravats, fossils, and heaps of little rumpled bits of paper, in which the fossils had once been contained. Dr. Campbell opened every one of these. The paper he wanted was not amongst them. He took every thing out of the box, shook and searched all the pockets of the coat, in which Forester used, before his reformation, to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth



Words linked to "Rumpled" :   untidy, frowzled



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