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Convivial   Listen
adjective
Convivial  adj.  Of or relating to a feast or entertainment, or to eating and drinking, with accompanying festivity; festive; social; gay; jovial. "Which feasts convivial meetings we did name."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Convivial" Quotes from Famous Books



... on how Mrs. Gray had dealt with the matter, and on how long her husband had remained with his convivial friends, and on these two points Reggie had no knowledge. Yet much of the success which attended his efforts for Mr. Gray this morning, had their beginning in the fact that Mrs. Gray had received her husband late the night before, with no word of reproach, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... speech have been linked together since the time of Harpocrates, whom Cupid bribed to silence by the gift of a golden Rose-bud; and therefore it became customary at Roman feasts to suspend over the table a flower of this kind as a hint that the convivial sayings which were then interchanged wore not to be talked of outside. What was spoken "sub vino" was not ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... the nursery rhymes of our literature. Yet in its place a malignant spirit of evil revels in the ruin of the human race; it delights in the crowd; it loves the gaslight, the lascivious song and wanton dance; it presides over our convivial banquets with brow crowned with ivy and faded roses; whilst all the unholy delights of earth sacrifice to it, in return it scatters amongst its adorers all the ills and sorrows that flow from the curse of Eden, making a libation to the infernal ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivial chiefs, sat at the head of the council in the big compound. His right eye and jaw were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaulting somebody's fist. It was palace gossip that morning that Sepeli had administered a conjugal beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober, and ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... heard his friend speak of feeling ill? No, not until a moment before the final stroke was made. Then Mr. Carwell had said he felt "queer," and had acted as though dizzy. The major, who was himself quite a convivial spirit, attributed it to some highballs he and his friend had had in the clubhouse ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... with, while the other of us jotted the figures down in a note-book. Many of the men were over six feet tall, and none that we measured was under five feet nine inches. One young giant, Emmie-ray, was much interested in our researches. The whalers call him "Set-'em-Up," for his name bears the convivial translation, "Give us a drink." "You going to make better man, you get Outside—make him like Emmie-ray?" As Emmie-ray pursues the tenour of his Arctic way, hunting the walrus, standing, a frozen statue, with uplifted spear over the breathing-hole of the seal, to the end of the chapter ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... had many convivial days at Elmwood House, but Matilda was never mentioned by one of his guests, and most probably was never thought of. During all those holidays, she was unusually melancholy, but sunk into the deepest dejection when she was told the day was fixed, on which her ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... fountains, fanes, and bowers, That e'en her name shall dubious meaning bear;— Then, my lov'd Friends, who oft, in darker hours, Have shar'd with me a conflict more severe, O! let us lose in wine our sorrow's weight, And rise the masters of our future fate! This night we revel in convivial ease, To-morrow seek again the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... patrolled this side; I must have waited several minutes, lying concealed in the dense shrubbery, peering and listening, before becoming fully convinced. The omission brought a vague suspicion that Johnston might not be present after all—that this was instead a mere party of convivial officers. If so, the sooner I could convince myself the better, to make good our safe return. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... Knickerbockers improve upon that notion, by taking HOLLAND'S tickets. Remember how, in the early settlement of the country, it was Holland that made New-York, and see that New-York now returns the compliment, and makes HOLLAND. Convivial songsters frequently remind ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... Tom dead. Good Lord! What times we have had together! Where are all the good fellows I used to know? Half of them dead, and the rest condemned to die! No more yachting on the broads! No more convivial evenings at the Troc.! No more long nights spinning yarns in Tom's old rooms in the Temple! Curse this blasted war that robs one of everything worth having, that dulls every sense of decency and kills all feeling for beauty, destroys the ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... the convivial meal of the day. To this the girls invited outside friends and acquaintances, and, as a rule, they always took ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... decided to stun Mr. Swenson, though, if he had known that gentleman more intimately and had been aware that he had the reputation of possessing the thickest head on the water-front, he would have realised the magnitude of the task. Friends of Mr. Swenson, in convivial moments, had frequently endeavoured to stun him with bottles, boots and bits of lead piping and had gone away depressed by failure. Sam, ignorant of this, attempted to do the job with clenched fist, which he brought ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... John's convivial habits leads me to say, in all candour, that his failings in this regard were greatly exaggerated. There is no doubt that at one time—in an age when almost everybody drank wine freely—he was no exception to the general rule. This was particularly true ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... invite Nero to visit him at this villa, as if to witness some spectacles or shows which should be arranged for his entertainment there, and that then persons employed for the purpose should suddenly assassinate him, when off his guard, in the midst of some scene of convivial pleasure. Piso, however, objected to this plan. He conceived, he said, that it would be dishonorable in him to commit an act of violence upon a guest whom he had invited under his roof, as his friend. He was willing to take his full share of the responsibility ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... the soul of our entertainment: amongst his other virtues, he has the companionable and convivial ones to an immense degree, which I never had an opportunity of discovering so clearly before. He seemed charmed beyond words to see us all so happy: we staid till four o'clock in the morning, yet all complained to-day we ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... unhealthy influence upon the poet's mind and habits. At this time he appears to have made very little effort to resist the pressing hospitality of his friends, and to have complied only too readily with the convivial customs of the time. He returned to Helpstone moody and discontented, and in his letters to Mrs. Emmerson he complained fretfully of the hardship of his lot in being compelled to spend his days without any literary companionship whatsoever. About this time that lady wrote to him two letters, which ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... composed chiefly of gentlemen who had, from their pursuits, travelled over most of the world—had seen developments of human character under every variety of circumstance, and observed society, civilized, barbarous, and savage, in all its phases. Their conversation, therefore, when around the convivial board, possessed an unhackneyed freshness and ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... made others, and spent a week or two very pleasantly in the best society of the metropolis, easily accessible to a wealthy, well-bred young Southerner, with proper introductions. Young women smiled on him, and young men of convivial habits pressed their hospitalities; but the memory of Charity's sweet, strong face and clear blue eyes made him proof against the blandishments of the one sex and the persuasions of the other. Meanwhile ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... of the best scholars of the whole, might assist him most. He certainly offered him the most touching compliment, as it was also the wisest and most paternal counsel, when he besought him, as one goddess-born, to quit the convivial ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... once got into the company of what he considered wits and men of spirit, soon became thoroughly vitiated. He was almost the only one of the set among whom he passed what he considered his highly convivial existence, who was really worth anything, pecuniarily speaking. There were some among them who might have been respectable men, and perchance carved their way to fortune, as well as some others who had started in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... "Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all means! An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another English cheer for the goddess ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... compliment to his more intellectual powers, but by the admission of his convivial supremacy as a guide to the banquet, contained in the latter part of Camilla's remonstrance. The sex were then, as now, culpably deficient in gastronomic enthusiasm. It was, therefore, a perfect triumph to have made a convert ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... convivial, but always a sober man, gives a delicate allusion to the drinking propensity, in the following toast:—"May the man who has a good wife, never be addicted to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... Saturday noon, and the township of Loo was rapidly filling with convivial shearers. The sheds were cutting out at Dim Distance, Devil's Bend, and the Emu, and the men were full of money, and ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... too ascetic. Christ dined with publicans and sinners; and a man must unbend somewhere, or he loses the elasticity of his mind, and becomes a formula or a mechanism. The convivial enjoyments of Luther enabled him to bear his burden. Had Thomas a Becket shown the same humanity as archbishop that he did as chancellor, he might not have quarrelled with his royal master. So Chrysostom ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... and a department-store whose owner had begun life as a "fence." In any crowd of these revellers you might have such strange creatures pointed out to you; a multimillionaire who sold rotten jam to the people; another who had invented opium soothing-syrup for babies; a convivial old gentleman who disbursed the "yellow dog fund" of several railroads; a handsome chauffeur who had run away with an heiress. 'Once a great scientist had invented a new kind of underwear, and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... ballad, in which either a San Domingo or a Signior Domingo, is celebrated for his miraculous feats in drinking. Silence, in the abundance of his festivity, touches upon some old song, in which this convivial saint, or signior, was the burden. Perhaps, too, the pronounciation in here suited to the character." I must own that I cannot see what San Domingo has to do with a drinking song. May it not be an allusion to a ballad or song on Domingo, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various

... not want to attend. It would be another of those stiff, lonesome dinners he had suffered through before, but he had to learn to make friends on his own social level, and be easy and convivial with the kind of people he would be associating with ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... few, by signs, winks, and natural instinct, were drawn towards this convivial circle; but, notwithstanding all her efforts to make herself understood, Mrs. Manly was sadly hampered by the presence of a tub-like old lady who, with a small boy, ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... to his native village, but he is probably informed at the same time, unofficially, that his presence will be dispensed with if he will send to the Commune a certain specified sum. The money thus sent is generally used by the Commune for convivial ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... controlled myself. One point in his character I knew well—I had known it of old—this was his excessive love of good wine. I aided and abetted him in this weakness, and whenever he visited me I took care that he should have his choice of the finest vintages. Often after a convivial evening spent in my apartments with a few other young men of his class and caliber, he reeled out of my presence, his deeply flushed face and thick voice bearing plain testimony as to his condition. On these occasions I used to consider with a sort of fierce humor how Nina would receive him—for ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... to the man he assigned to "rope" Collins, "ingratiate yourself with him as quickly as possible. The subject is an easy mark for a convivial companion. You'll probably find him around the restaurants at night. Get an introduction and spend money freely. The gloom of tragedy doesn't cling long to a man like Collins, and even if it does, he'll try to dispel it with drink. Don't push him for information, but lead him on gently. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... admit him, Martin, I think he knows a little law."—"Make it stronger, Jo," was the reply; "d—-d little."]—Society more than ever attracted him and devoured his time. He willingly accepted the office of "champion at the tea-parties;" he was one of a knot of young fellows of literary tastes and convivial habits, who delighted to be known as "The Nine Worthies," or "Lads of Kilkenny." In his letters of this period I detect a kind of callowness and affectation which is not discernible in his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... was head over heels in love, and so was she, for that matter. The old man was a jolly old John Bull of a man. I don't believe he had the slightest approach to any designs on me. He didn't know any thing about me, so how could he? He was jolly, and when we got to Calais he was convivial. I attached myself to the two, and had a glorious time. Before three days I had exchanged vows of eternal fidelity with the lady, and all that, and had gained her consent to marry me on reaching England. As to the old man there ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... at my orders, I'd get a commission from Government to clear that road. It's too bad, Sir, we can't go in and out of town, unless in a body, after night-fall, but at the risk of our lives. [The convivial doctor felt this public scandal acutely.] The bloody-minded miscreants, I'd catch every living soul of them, and burn them alive in tar-barrels. By Jove! here's old Joe Napper, of Dirty-lane's dead. Plenty of dry eyes after him. And ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... of his Christian name, so he always signed himself 'R. Wilfer.' Hence his neighbours provided him with all sorts of fancy names beginning with R, but his popular name was Rumty, which a 'gentleman of convivial habits connected with the drug market' had bestowed upon him, and which was derived from ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... supported himself by teaching the piano. In 1797 he returned to his native country, and in a very few years he became famous as a writer of comedies, operas and vaudevilles, which were produced in rapid succession at the Thtre des Varits and the Vaudeville. He also wrote convivial and satirical songs, which, though different in character, can only worthily be compared with those of Branger. He was at one time president of the Caveau, a convivial society whose members were then chiefly drawn from literary circles. He had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... German-English "Komm!" that followed his knock, he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre breakfast was scattered in stale fragments on the table before the stove. The place was bare and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a room with a bed in it, which seemed also to be a cobbler's shop: on the right, through a door that stood ajar, came the German-English voice again, saying ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... had been arranged for John Law, that opportunity for which he had waited all his life. Before him now, as he stood in the great council chamber, facing this man whose ambitions ended where his own began—at the convivial board and at the gaming table—he saw the path which led to the success that he had craved so long. He, Law of Lauriston, sometime adventurer and gambler, was now playing his last and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... a fight," said Jay, without experiencing the humour of his remark. "I believe you would rather fight than sit down in good company at any time, and you are notoriously convivial. But easy conquest would demoralize you. If I do not mistake, you have the greatest battle of your career, past or present, immediately ahead of you—and it means so much to all of us—I ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... healing if blood had once been shed. Yet he was keenly alive to the dignity of his office, and resumed it in the next moment. Indeed, the drinking of the glass of good-will together was rather a ceremonial than a convivial affair. Perhaps that also was the best. The men were silent and respectful, and for the first time lifted their caps with a hearty courtesy to Tallisker when he ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the life of this King, the Marquis of Lucchesini was frequently of his literary and convivial parties; but he was neither his friend nor his favourite, but his listener. It was first under Frederick William II. that he began his diplomatic career, with an appointment as Minister from Prussia to the late ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... proceedings were of a highly convivial nature, as befitted so auspicious an occasion. There was a generous imbibing of "a bountiful supply of Mr. Lloyd's prime port, sherry, etc.," and "a procession of miners and quarrymen, more than 100 ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... Parson, an ironic Dunciad-Variorum-type editing of Lloyd's Epistle, in which he got much the better of Lloyd. Lloyd was no match for Kenrick at this sort of thing. Except for these uninteresting productions and his convivial friendship with Wilkes and Garrick, we hear ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... the females at Auchingower very anxious for the breaking up of the convivial party; for it was a part of the arrangement, that although David Deans was to remain at Auchingower, and Butler was that night to take possession of the Manse, yet Jeanie, for whom complete accommodations were not yet ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... that there was an uneasy feeling that Spindler's action indicated an unhallowed leaning towards the minority of respectability and exclusiveness, and a desertion—without the excuse of matrimony—of the convivial and independent bachelor majority of ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... shooting. His Majesty, fond of private joviality, (67) was pleased with punch after dinner, and indulged in it freely. The Duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister might make of the openness of the King's heart in those convivial, unguarded hours, and at a crisis when she was conscious Sir Robert was apprised of her inimical machinations in favour of Lord Bolingbroke, enjoined the few Germans who accompanied the King at those dinners to prevent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... drinking continued to be convivial. I drank when others drank and I was with them. But, imperceptibly, my need for alcohol took form and began to grow. It was not a body need. I boxed, swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the open an arrantly healthful life, and passed life ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... just named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... of thriving farmers and semi-retired city men, Acredale mingled the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the society decorously convivial. People could be fine—at least they were thought very fine—without going to the British isles to recast their home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... was once more an insult in its allusion to the pies (Caius was again hungry), and in its refusal of simple information; but the tone was more cheerful, and O'Shea had relaxed from his extreme brevity. Caius sat down, and felt almost convivial when he found that a parcel of bread and cheese and a huge bottle of cold tea were to be shared between them. Either the food was perfect of its kind or his appetite good sauce, for never had anything tasted sweeter than the meal. They ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... heard tidings of the emeute at Shabatz, and the murder of his friend the collector Ninitch, he diverged from his route to visit the monasteries of Ravanitza and Manasia, the former of which was the burial-place of Lasar. But as his reminiscences of these saintly retreats are rather convivial than antiquarian, we shall pass on at once to Svilainitza, (the place of silk,) where he was entertained in the chateau of M. Ressavatz, the richest man in Servia; the only chateau-residence as he tells us, which he saw in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... and fastened back from the windows. They had added a set of shelves made out of a box covered with American leather and brass-headed nails. A few books lay upon one shelf, and on another stood a collection of cups, saucers, and plates, cracked, perhaps, and not all matching, but suggestive of convivial parties and good cheer. In one corner lay a cushion embroidered in woolwork with magenta roses, pea-green leaves, and orange-coloured daisies, all upon a background of ultramarine blue. Mollie thought it gave an effective ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... the dead man had been found to be intact, including a valuable diamond ring, about a hundred and fifty dollars in bills, and his watch, papers, etc. A jovial, light-hearted young rancher, hailing originally from the Old Country, a bachelor of more or less convivial habits, he had enjoyed the hearty good-will of the country-side, incurring the enmity of no one, with the exception of Moran, as far as they knew. The latter's alibi having established his innocence beyond doubt, no definite clues were forthcoming as yet, beyond the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... him, that he commenced to laugh, and, finding it inconvenient to do so on his legs, he sat down to indulge his humour freely. A laughing jackass perched on the fence at the side of the road heard Mr Villiers' hilarity, and, being of a convivial turn of mind itself, went off into fits of laughter also. On hearing this echo Mr Villiers tried to get up, in order to punish the man who mocked him, but, though his intentions were good, his legs were unsteady, and after one or two ineffectual attempts to rise he gave it up as ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... Miscellaneous Poems; and in 1814 The Modern Dunciad, in which he sings the praises of 'old books, old wines, old customs, and old friends.' He continued to write during the whole of his life, and his last work, Love's Last Labour not Lost, was published in 1863. Daniel was fond of convivial society, and numbered Charles Lamb and Robert Bloomfield among his acquaintances, and he was also intimate with many of the principal actors of the day. He died at his son's house, The Grove, Stoke Newington, on the 30th of March 1864. The cause of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... said, for the remainder of his days. He lived in what the sober Americans called a most luxurious and magnificent style. The best company in Philadelphia met at his house: and he delighted particularly in seeing those who had convivial talents, and who would supply him with wit and gaiety, in which he ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... Cartwright decided, "is a credit to them an' commends them to a respectful hearin'. On its face it would seem to admit them to the ancient an' honorable brotherhood of convivial man. But, suh, there's another side to this question, an' it's this:—a creature that's got six perfectly good legs, not to mention wings, an' still can't carry his liquor without bein' caught, deserves his fate. It's not in my line to offer suggestions ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... sister of Archibald Henning, and she used to give him a small sum whenever he spent his evenings abroad in company with Macready, Laman Blanchard, John Forster, Jerrold, and others, at the Shakespeare Club. He was a little man with a feeble frame, and much addicted to convivial society." He was, indeed, a boon-companion, generous and kind-hearted, and a delightful raconteur—"happy, conversational Meadows," as Blanchard Jerrold calls him—when at the club, and a jovial roystering Bohemian when ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... associated, as Chief Secretary, Mr. Hobart, formerly in the army, a man of gay, convivial habits, very accomplished, and, politically, very unprincipled. These gentlemen, both favourites of Pitt, adopted the counsellors, and continued the policy of the late Viceroy. In pursuance of this policy, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... considered necessary appurtenances of the courts of native Hindu princes, although they are never found in the palaces of Mohammedans. They are brought forward upon all occasions of ceremony, religious, official and convivial. If the viceroy visits the capital of one of the native states he is entertained by their best performances. They have a place on the programme at all celebrations of feast days; they appear at weddings and birthday anniversaries, and are quite as important ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... the easy indifference of one accustomed to the best society, towards the authority of those who presumed to judge of modern manners, without having access to see those of the higher circles. The picture which it draws of the elegance of the convivial parties of the wits in that gay time has been quoted ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... lodgings occupied by Bob Sawyer. The young medical practitioner invited Mr. Pickwick and his three friends to a convivial meeting; but the termagant Mrs. Raddle brought the meeting to an untimely end.—C. Dickens, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... mother, a saint in heaven; his solemn adjuration that I would cherish her memory and imitate her virtues; and the fervor with which he kissed and blessed me as the sole surviving pledge of their loves. The storm of passion insensibly subsided into calmer melancholy. At a convivial meeting of his friends, Mr. Gibbon might affect or enjoy a gleam of cheerfulness; but his plan of happiness was for ever destroyed: and after the loss of his companion he was left alone in a world, of which the business and pleasures were to him irksome or insipid. After some unsuccessful trials ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... a frequenter of convivial haunts. I should not dare to penetrate alone into a private bar; when I do enter a private bar it is invariably under the august protection of an habitue, and it is invariably with the idea that at last I am going ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... produced a natural reaction. Not a few of the intimates of the Hotel de Rambouillet found a relief from their fatigue of fine manners and high-pitched emotions in the unedifying jests and merry tales of the tavern. A comic, convivial, burlesque or picaresque literature became, as it were, a parody of the literature of preciosity. Saint-Amand (1594-1661) was at once a disciple of the Italian Marini, the admired "Sapurnius" of the salon, author ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly, or to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could afford, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... through many introductions that evening; and, in the next fortnight, received ample and daily proofs of the proverbial hospitality of Baltimore. There are residents—praisers of the time gone by, who cease not to lament the convivial decadence of the city; but such deficiency is by no means apparent to ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... be seen on a market day in the nearest town, not infrequently in the taverns, and in the evening festooning along the roads on their way back to their hermitages, trolling out convivial songs spiced with snatches of ecclesiastical chants. "Mon Dieu," says Ferdinand Fabre, [Footnote: Barnabe, Paris, 1899] "I know well enough that the Free Brothers of S. Francis, as they loved to entitle themselves, had allowed themselves a good deal of freedom, more than was decorous. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... Now one of them, now another, developed the habit of frequenting the monastery. Ostrov especially received an eager welcome there. He pleased, by his external piety, the older monks who were in authority. There were a number of convivial monks who were especially fond of Ostrov. The monks advised him to join the local union of the Black Hundred. They said that it would be pleasing to God. They engaged him in religious and patriotic conversations and invited ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... Well, here's to her! With this nectar fit for the gods and goddesses of Olympus, let us drink to her," said old Sanders, with convivial dignity, his glass raised on high. "Here's wishing health and happiness to the dreamy-eyed Tuscan beauty, whom you love and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... circumstance, however, and filling my glass, professed my resolve to sit to the last, with a mental reserve to take my departure at the very first opportunity. Ormond and the paymaster quitted the room for a moment, as if to give orders for a broil at twelve, and now all seemed to promise a very convivial and well-sustained ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... tippling, bibacity, drunkenness, carousal, guzzling, intemperance. Antonyms: temperance nephalism, abstinence, teetotalism. Associated Words: bibacious, bibulous, bibitory, dipsomania, alcoholism thirst, nectar, hobnob, bacchanalian, inebriant, potatory, oenomania, symposium, crapulence, supernaculum convivial, conviviality, tankard, beaker, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... live, therefore, fenced around with chastity; [110] corrupted by no seductive spectacles, [111] no convivial incitements. Men and women are alike unacquainted with clandestine correspondence. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband. He ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... and most amiable, he had great pluck and determination. I remember that in one of our convivial meetings we had the laugh upon him for some cause, an occurrence so rare that the bantering was carried too far. After bearing it awhile, Hawthorne singled out the one among us who had the reputation of being the best pugilist, and in a few words quietly told him that he would not permit ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... always there is some ideal aim in the mixed motive. Out of six gay young men who drive and drink together, only one cares for the meat and the bottle. With the rest this feasting gallantly on the best, regardless of expense, is part of a system. It is in good style, is convivial. For these green-horns of society to live together, to be convivae, is not to think and labor together, as wise men use, but to laugh and be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... see the two old lovers sitting side by side, in spite of all, drinking from the same little cup—a battered zinc dipper which Sailor Ben had unslung from a strap round his waist. I think I never saw him without this dipper and a sheath-knife suspended just back of his hip, ready for any convivial occasion. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... pipe in the day? We used to say at home that a man should smoke but four pipes a-day: the matutinal, another I don't specify, the post-prandial, and the symposial or convivial, which last may be infinitely subdivided, according to the quantity of drink taken. But in Australia this division won't obtain, particularly when you are on the tramp. Just when you wake from a dreamless sleep beneath the forest boughs, as the east begins to blaze, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... Congress, of slightly convivial turn, went to sleep on the floor of the House of Representatives and suddenly awakening, convulsed the assemblage by demanding in a loud voice, "Where am I at?" he propounded an inquiry that is indisputably ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... that enlivened the autumn in the country, known as "apple-cuts," now, alas! nearly obsolete, where so many things were cut and dried besides apples! The larger and more loaded the orchard, the more frequently the invitations went round and the higher the social and convivial spirit ran. Ours is eminently a country of the orchard. Horace Greeley said he had seen no land in which the orchard formed such a prominent feature in the rural and agricultural districts. Nearly every farmhouse in the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... in some measure succeeded. Before the appearance of my work the popular traditions of our city were unrecorded; the peculiar and racy customs and usages derived from our Dutch Progenitors were unnoticed, or regarded with indifference, or adverted to with a sneer. Now they form a convivial currency, and are brought forward on all occasions: they link our whole community together in good humor and good fellowship; they are the rallying-points of home feeling, the seasoning of our civic festivities, the staple of local tales and local pleasantries; and are so harped upon by our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to Lord Clifford and his family, as his near relation and presumptive heir; They spent the evening in the pleasures of convivial mirth and hospitable entertainment. The next day Sir Philip began to open his mind to Lord Clifford, informing him that both his young friend and himself had received great injuries from the present Lord Lovel, for which they were resolved to call him ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... seizures to a great amount, and was proportionally hated by those who had an interest in the fair trade, as they called the pursuit of these contraband adventurers. This person was natural son to a gentleman of good family, owing to which circumstance, and to his being of a jolly, convivial disposition, and singing a good song, he was admitted to the occasional society of the gentlemen of the country, and was a member of several of their clubs for practising athletic games, at ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... This convivial temperament of the inhabitants of New France has been noted by more than one contemporary. The people did not spend all their energies and time at hard labor. From October, when the crops were in, until May, when the season of seedtime ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... liberal. The results and the records of those who met him in such hours are quite sufficient to prove that he did not leave the impression of a Prussian arrogance. If he was silent, his silence must have been more friendly, I had almost said more convivial, than many men's conversation. But on the larger platform of the European War, this quiet but unique gift of open-mindedness and intellectual hospitality was destined to do two very decisive things, which may profoundly affect history. In ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... I sent a short time since to a committee for a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I received a note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined, with the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the closing performance of the season, and by that time, so far as a single success could be said to establish any one, March was established. He and Mary discussed this rather soberly as they drove home in the small car after the convivial wind-up supper at the Moraine, where this fact had been effusively dwelt upon. Their wedding was now ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... watched him with the air of a proprietor, and Mrs. Cooper's remark that "her husband had had his eye upon him for a long time, and that he had better be careful for the future," was faithfully retailed to him within half an hour of its utterance. Convivial friends counted his cups for him; teetotal friends more than hinted that Cooper was in the employ of ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... at the line Pitt had taken with reference to his debts. The hopes of the opposition ran high. Fox, who was travelling in Italy with his mistress, Mrs. Armistead, was sent for in hot haste. In his absence Sheridan, whose convivial habits made him acceptable to the prince, busied himself with the affairs of the party. If they came into power Loughborough had an undoubted claim to the chancellorship. Thurlow, however, was ready to betray his colleagues if he were assured that he should retain his office. The prince ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... did; and the party, thus genially thrown together and set to work, soon began, to experience the balmy influences of a convivial high tea. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... announced that it was a mere flesh wound, and sat down as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred to mar the festive occasion. Through the rest of the day, boats were passing between the ship and the sloop in a convivial reunion. Supper was to be cooked on the beach in great iron kettles and a frolic would follow the feast. The sloop had rum enough to sluice all the parched ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... respected it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. I went to the chase and appeared at the table, and was as convivial as the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the convivial banquets of the Pagans interwoven with their religious rites, so essentially was a great dinner a great offering to the Gods, and vice versa—a great offering to the Gods a great dinner—that the very ministers and chief agents in religion were at first the same. Cocus, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... confess that, up to a recent date, I had not given Spiritualists—qua spiritualists—credit for being a cheerful or convivial people. Though there exist upon the tablets of my memory recollections of certain enjoyable dinners, cosy teas, and charming petits soupers, eaten at the mahogany of believers in the modern mystery, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... surely neither ungraceful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Quantrell, now pleasantly convivial, and acting under the generous impulse the drink has produced, sings out "Champagne!" a wine which the poorest tavern in the Southern States, even the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... was rapidly widening in his own country, and his powers were finding a response in minds superior to any which he had hitherto known. Up to this time he had not associated with any persons of a higher grade than the convivial lawyers of Mauchline and Ayr, and the mundane ministers of the New Light school. But now persons of every rank were anxious to become acquainted with the wonderful Ayrshire Ploughman, for it was by that name he now began to be known, just as in the next generation another poet of as humble ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... to hear of this decision; for, admirable as you are in the jocose, you descend from your natural position when you come to the convivial and the festive. You were placed among the Affections, to move and master them, and gifted with the rod that sweetens the fount of tears. My nature leads me also to the pathetic; in which, however, an imbecile writer may obtain celebrity. Even the hard-hearted are fond of such reading, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... There was something cherubic in the smoothness and the fullness of his face, the clear gray of his eyes, the fine-spun blond of his short-cropped hair, and the plumpness of his hands and half-bared arms. He was a priestly, well-fed looking man, was this Jolly Roger, rotund and convivial in all his proportions, and some in great error would have called him fat. But it was a strange kind of fatness, as many a man on the trail could swear to. And as for sin, or one sign of outlawry, it could not be found ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... which extended from Mauritania to Tartary, and they did notable service in arresting its disruption. Their downfall came sudden and terrible like "a thunderbolt from the blue." As the Caliph and Ja'afar were halting in Al-'Umr (the convent) near Anbar-town on the Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different pavilions, Harun during the dead of the night called up his page Yasir al-Rikhlah[FN268] and bade him bring Ja'afar's head. The messenger found Ja'afar still carousing with the blind poet Abu Zakkar ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... wiser heads than M. Carlier. "Selon qu'il est conduit," said Richelieu, and he knew his nation well; "Selon qu'il est conduit le peuple Francais est capable de tout." I am no enemy of innocent recreation, as you are well aware, or of harmless, convivial, social, or saltatory enjoyment. But if lasciviousness, obscenity, or des saletes be tolerated in public places, a blow is struck at the very foundations of society. I may not, even in a letter, enter into a minute description of these dances. Suffice it to say, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... of the many places round Yedo to which the good citizens flock for purposes convivial or religious, or both; hence it is that, cheek by jowl with the old shrines and temples, you will find many a pretty tea-house, standing at the rival doors of which Mesdemoiselles Sugar, Wave of the Sea, Flower, Seashore, and Chrysanthemum are pressing in their invitations to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... hard life was wearing upon him. Perhaps he was too convivial. There was hard drinking everywhere about him; and he did not abstain. He had supreme confidence in the lasting character of his own vitality. He might be ill for a few days occasionally, but he was soon up and actively at work ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... us out rapidly, and as we left we continued to take in the town, strolling by pairs and drinking moderately as we went. Flood had returned in the mean time, and seemed rather convivial and quite willing to enjoy the enforced lay-over with us. While taking a drink in Yellowstone Bob's place, the foreman took occasion to call the attention of The Rebel to a cheap lithograph of General Grant which hung behind the bar. The two discussed the merits ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... in front of the massive safe seemed to lear at him with a bleared eye like that of a toper, who, having spent the night in convivial company, found himself, most unaccountably, on his own doorstep in the ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... fifty years), this honorable origin is still assigned to many heirlooms, to some probably correctly. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in his delightful lines, "On Lending a Punch Bowl," humorously claims for his convivial silver vessel a place with ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... party. To carry out these objects a small fund was raised, to which every one contributed; and thence was derived the name of the association: "gildan," in Saxon, signifying to pay. With a view to becoming better acquainted with one another, and to draw more closely the bands of friendship, convivial meetings were held at fixed periods, when a vast quantity of beer was quaffed in honour of the living, and to the memory of the dead. In after-times this truly Saxon institution assumed greater proportions, ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... a most lovable man—rather too convivial—and for a while in 1852 it looked as though he might be the Democratic nominee. His candidacy was premature, his backers overconfident ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... favorite auditorium. The "presentation" of the class was made in Greek by Professor Boise, while President Haven replied in Latin. In one at least of these first class-day programmes the oration and poem only were public, while the history and prophecy were submitted to the class at a convivial session at ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... was a much frequented tavern in Roxbury, with the figure of a greyhound upon its sign. It was in this tavern that the repeal of the Stamp Act was celebrated, 1767. Convivial parties were courteously entertained by ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... not unnatural mistake, sir,' said Dick, substituting another in its stead, 'I had handed you the pass-ticket of a select convivial circle called the Glorious Apollers of which I have the honour to be Perpetual Grand. That is the proper document, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... appears improbable. What is certain was our utter inability ever to get a rise from the provoking creatures. The dry fly is difficult to use on a loch, as there is no stream to move it, and however gently you draw it it makes a "wake"—a trail behind it. Wet or dry, or "twixt wet and dry," like the convivial person in the song, we could none of us raise them. I did catch a small but beautifully proportioned and pink-fleshed trout with the alder, but everything else, silver sedge and all, everything from midge to May-fly, in the late twilight, was offered to them in vain. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... reddish-fair hair and, after removing from his face the skillfully painted wrinkles and the powder, he hastened to add red cheeks to the fair curls on his head, and to tinge the tip of his nose with the rosy hue which suggests a convivial nature. After this was accomplished, and the baron had convinced himself by a careful examination in the mirror that he was transformed into a charming, gay, young fellow, he began a similar metamorphosis ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... distaste for the severer studies may probably be found in his natural indolence and his love of convivial pleasures. "I was a lover of mirth, good humor, and even sometimes of fun," said he, "from my childhood." He sang a good song, was a boon companion, and could not resist any temptation to social enjoyment. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... many of which had a borrowed aspect, an implication of bare bedrooms in the upper regions; a table or two with a discoloured marble top, a few books, and a collection of newspapers piled up in corners. Ransom could see for himself that the occasion was not crudely festive; there was a want of convivial movement, and, among most of the visitors, even of mutual recognition. They sat there as if they were waiting for something; they looked obliquely and silently at Mrs. Farrinder, and were plainly under ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... science, he has raised no man of genius from obscurity; he counts no one prime work of God among his friends. From the same source he has no attachment to female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance and the sense of internal power, gives feelings without the mediation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... for General Stoughton," responded Mosby. The door was quickly unlocked, and the guerilla chief stood by the bedside of the sleeping general, who had but a few moments before retired from a dancing and convivial party. Fancy now the reenactment of the scene in old Ticonderoga fort, when Ethan Allen, by stratagem, stood in the presence ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... last ten years, my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy.... I arrived half an hour before Lamb, and had time to learn something of his peculiarities. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he never shows a trace of what he once was. He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into a belief in one of his grave ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... the delight of every lover of vocal harmony. It is to Italy, however, that we are indebted for this species of composition. The madrigal is a piece of vocal music adapted to words of an amorous or cheerful cast, composed for four, five, or six voices, and intended for performance in convivial parties or private musical societies. It is full of ingenious and elaborate contrivances; but, in the happier specimens, contains likewise agreeable and expressive melody. At the period of which we now speak, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various



Words linked to "Convivial" :   sociable, conviviality, good-time



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