"Kneed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against this Berselius," said Adams to himself, "same as if we were dogs. That's the long and short of it. Yes, I can understand his meaning in part; he's afraid if Berselius engages some week-kneed individual, he'll give the weak-kneed individual more than he can take. He wants to stick a six-foot Yankee in the breach, instead of a five-foot froggie, all absinthe and cigarette ends. Well, he was frank, at all events. Hum, I don't like the proposition—and yet there's ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... did not forgive. So when the Tondo "discoverer" of the Katipunan fancied he saw opportunity for promotion in fanning their flame of wrath, they claimed their victims, and neither the panic-stricken populace nor the weak-kneed government could ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... Risingh, who succeeded to the command of New Sweden, looms largely in ancient records as a gigantic Swede, who, had he not been rather knock-kneed and splay-footed, might have served for the model of a Samson or a Hercules. He was no less rapacious than mighty, and withal, as crafty as he was rapacious, so that there is very little doubt that, had he lived some four or five centuries since, he would have figured as one of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... perhaps as object lessons of "the incorrect method" in reading novels—women, as novel-readers, must be considered as not existing. And, of course, no offense is intended. But if there be any weak-kneed readers who prefer the gilt-wash of pretty politeness to the solid gold of truth, let them understand that I am not to be frightened away from plain facts by any charge ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... considers herself quite a Parisienne now she's got her official carte d'alimentation, appeared the other day in a skirt that resembled the jupe of a gamine. I think it's disgraceful in one of her age and proportions. If she were simply knock-kneed; but, as Bertie says, she's knock-ankled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... to the hearthrug). That wont do for me. Dont be weak-kneed, Balsquith. You know perfectly well that the real government of this country is and always must be the government of the masses by the classes. You know that democracy is damned nonsense, and that no class stands less of it than the working class. You know that we are already discussing ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... not the drinker have his paradise? The teetotallers have slapped their bosoms and vowed that liquor was the devil's own invention. (Note, by the way, that liquor is a noble word that should not be applied to those weak-kneed abominations that insolently flaunt their lack of alcohol. Let them be called liquids or fluids or beverages, or what you will. Liquor is a word for heroes, for the British tar who has built up British glory—Imperialism is quite the fashion now.) And for ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... your horse, being a Lincolnshire man, and the son of one who bred horses. I will myself go down into the stable and examine into the condition of your horse, so pray remain quiet till I return; it would certainly be a terrible thing to appear at Horncastle on a broken-kneed horse.' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... it my way. You'd make a poor showing, kicking drive levers with a broken leg." Geoffrey nodded toward The Barbarian's right shin. "It's been that way since before you picked me up, hasn't it? I saw it wobble when you kneed that man-at-arms." ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... (Chicks)—Cause: Feed lacking in bone and animal matter; close confinement; lack of exercise; over-heating in brooders. Symptoms: Chicks walk in a wobbly, weak-kneed fashion, often resting or hobbling along on the joints. Treatment: Feed young chicks on Pratts Baby Chick Food. Give fair amount of beef or fish scrap and bone meal. Afford opportunity for exercise, especially on the ground. Avoid bottom heat in brooders. Feed liberally on green food. Add small ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... replied he, very angrily, "a set down, do you call it! I had rather a thousand times he had knocked me down — an ugly, cross, knock-kneed, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... ice-pails, and the rest of the Veneering table decorations, make a brilliant show, and when I, Podsnap, casually remark elsewhere that I dined last Monday with a gorgeous caravan of camels, I find it personally offensive to have it hinted to me that they are broken-kneed camels, or camels labouring under suspicion of any sort. 'I don't display camels myself, I am above them: I am a more solid man; but these camels have basked in the light of my countenance, and how dare ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... pinto or calico horse in his string the horse-trader drifted toward the distant town of Concho, accompanied by a lazy cloud of dust, a slat-ribbed dog, and a knock-kneed foal that insisted on getting in the way of the wagon team. Strung out behind this indolently moving aggregation of desert adventurers plodded an indifferent lot of cayuses, their heads lowered and their eyes ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and bread and jam for his tea-dinner, with a fowl for Sundays—keeping his few plain rooms clean and his socks mended. A hundred or two a year must have covered his household expenses; the hundreds remaining of his handsome income went to shore up the weak-kneed of his kindred, who had the habit of falling back on him when their funds ran out, or anything else went ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... that it could never again do what it had in the past. These last, however, were but side reflections, toning down for him the fact that his nerves could no longer stand this vicarious butchery of youth. And so he had gradually become that "traitor to his country, a weak-kneed Peace by Negotiation man." Physically his knees really were weak, and he used to smile a wry smile when he read ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... Cape Giradeau, the above was growled out over his shoulder by the Missourian to a chance stranger who had just accosted him; a round-backed, baker-kneed man, in a mean five-dollar suit, wearing, collar-wise by a chain, a small brass plate, inscribed P. I. O., and who, with a sort of canine deprecation, slunk ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and woman; or perhaps they would be better described as a male and female: for the former was one of those long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult to assign any precise age,—looking as they do, when they are yet boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like overgrown boys. The woman ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... walks, he puts the thumb of each hand into the armhole of his waistcoat, and moves along stiffly, with a knock-kneed gait. His talk was chiefly of hotels, and such matters as a man, always travelling, without any purpose of observation for mental improvement, would be interested in. He spoke of his life as ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just beginning a few steps of a noiseless high-kicking dance when there was a tap at the door, and he collapsed into an attitude of weak-kneed ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... I hid myself behind a folding-gate of the fence and caught him in the act. Having his retreat cut off he grappled with me in desperation. He was about two years older than I, and, though weak-kneed, was physically the stronger. While I wallopped him, he pushed his head against my breast and by chance it slipped inside my sleeve. As this hindered the free action of my arm, I tried to shake him loose, though, his head ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... of ferocious determination. But something lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... MY DEAR HOWELLS,—It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the unfriendly. To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it. I want to enclose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Whitman preach libertinism in the name of democracy do not want reform; they are satisfied with things as they are. Wagner battled, both in music and in literature, for der reine Satz—purity of diction as against the untidy licence which was then and still is fashionable among weak-kneed artists ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... yourselves about them," broke out Buck, who had managed, with the assistance of Whitey and Oscar, to get the weak-kneed Clem Shooks in the shallow water; "they're on ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... is to pay. The politicians have a stampede on that is about to swamp everything. The National Committee are here to-day. Raymond thinks a commission to Richmond is the only salt to save us. The President sees and says it would be utter ruin. The matter is now undergoing consultation. Weak-kneed damned fools are on the move for a new candidate to supplant the President. Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement. Our men see giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows of the opposition, and are about to surrender ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... poems even worse liberties are found, and the strange turns and twists which the poet gives to his decasyllables suggest either a total want of ear or such a study in foreign languages that the student had actually forgotten the intonation and cadences of his own tongue. So stumbling and knock-kneed is his verse that any one who remembers the admirable versification of Chaucer may now and then be inclined to think that Wyatt had much better have left his innovations alone. But this petulance is soon rebuked by the appearance of such ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... shouldering his absurd weapon of office, which in the place of a gun was an immense carved wooden mace, not unlike a leg of the old-time wooden bedstead of antiquity. His ugliness was embittered somewhat by sunken, toothless jaws and an enigmatical stare from a cross-eye; he was also knock-kneed, and as an erstwhile gunpowder worker, had lost two fingers and a large part of one ear. But he had learnt the secret of simple duty: he had no dreams, no ambition embracing vast limits, did not appear to wish to achieve great things, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... children, but I can almost seem to see All of 'em lookin' down, like as if they pitied me, After the breakfasts they give me, to have me have to put up With nothing but bread and butter, and a little mis'able cup Of this here weak-kneed coffee! I can't tell how you feel, But it fairly makes me sick! Breakfast is ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... their aged and feeble limbs supported with thongs and makeshifts of every description; and where their pride had rebelled against such ingratitude, they were smothered beneath the limbs of fallen trees, which had been felled on the spot to serve as substitutes. His flumes were knock-kneed and bow-legged, and in places they had no legs at all. Their sides were warped and bulged with the alternate damp and drouth, heat and cold. The lumber was bleached white, and porous with decay. It was with difficulty they could be persuaded to remain at their water-carrying ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... I. "Who are you, anyway? Answer: the Sailor Poet. There you are! Sea captain's togs for you—double-breasted blue coat, baggy-kneed blue trousers, ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Ran away from the subscriber, on the night of June 18th, my negro man, Simon. He had on, when last seen, a pair of light pants, with a black patch on the seat of the same. He is slue-footed, knock-kneed, and bends over a little when walking. He may be making his way to the Dismal Swamp. I will pay the above reward for his apprehension, or his lodgment in some jail, so that ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... out, bit the end of the timber, and towed it to the boom pile. Another man stepped on the log with Darrell. They stood facing each other, bent-kneed, alert. Suddenly with one accord they commenced to birl the log from left to right. The pace grew hot. Like squirrels treading a cage their feet twinkled. Then it became apparent that Darrell's opponent was gradually being forced from the top of the log. He could not keep up. Little ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... told him I'd seen you ... and in a little calculated burst of confidence what I'd reason to think you were after. He said you and he could get on though you differed on every point; but he didn't see how you'd pull with such a blasted weak-kneed lot as the rest of the Horsham's cabinet would be. He'll be up in a ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... transaction. Curll was the chief of all piratical booksellers, and versed in every dirty trick of the Grub-street trade. He is described in that mad book, Amory's John Buncle, as tall, thin, ungainly, white-faced, with light grey goggle eyes, purblind, splay-footed, and "baker-kneed." According to the same queer authority, who professes to have lodged in Curll's house, he was drunk, as often as he could drink for nothing, and intimate in every London haunt of vice. "His translators lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn in Holborn," and helped to compile his indecent, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... obliged to you for Carter," said Mr Ormiston; "a more slack-kneed, double-jointed scoundrel was never offered a commission in a respectable cause. He'll be the first to rat if things begin to look queer for this new ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... bare kneed lad began to amble behind the foreigners, he taking his cue smartly and lolling out his tongue. The whole crowd set up a shout, and Eagle looked back. She wheeled and slapped the St. Bat's girl ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... shave," he said. "Them was murderin' savages, no weak-kneed Mission variety. I'd give two cents to know what scared 'em and what's goin' on over yonder. They were on the rampage, which same means thievin' and killin', or my ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... damned if I do! You're men here—or supposed to be—not a pack of weak-kneed women!... Afraid to go out and see what those lights are, are you? Well, I'm not. Look here. I'll have a bet with you boys. Fifty pounds that I get back safely, and dispel the morbid fancies from your kindergarten brains by tellin' you that the things are glow-worms, or some fool out for a practical ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... only a few paces from the place where Champlain had made a clearing for his "Place Royale" in the midst of the forest three hundred years ago. That beautiful boy, Jacques Jardin, brown-eyed, bare-kneed, in French soldier's cap, is to me the living incarnation of the adventure which has made even that chill wilderness blossom ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... A weak kneed peroration, truly; but Malcolm was over burdened at last. He laid the little parcel on the sand at her feet, almost reverentially, and again turned. But Lady Florimel ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... one of us ought to help to remedy the guilt, and just because others do not do so. The fact that society is guilty aggravates the guilt of each member of it. "Someone ought to do it, but why should I? is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. Someone ought to do it, so why not I? is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... fur—'sault, I think them fetch-taked lawyers called it. An' I says 'salt or sugar, I'm here, an' what air you goin' to do about it?' They fotch money again' me, an' the lawyers they jawed an' they palarvered; an' finally I got a chance to speak to that weak-kneed jedge, I did, an' I says, 'Look here, I've a longer knife, an' if you tell this jury to convict me, I'll put about a foot an' a half of it under yo' rusty ribs.' An' you better believe he smiled on me. Margaret, there ain't no use to set around here an' grieve. In this here world grief never counted ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... I found myself, weak-kneed and trembling, on the old home station platform. I was on the verge of tears. I looked up and down for Edith's anxious face, or for Alec's—they would be disturbed when they heard I had a fever, they might be alarmed—but I couldn't find them. The motor was not at ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... honeycombed; it is also subject, like its sister the Sadr, to the frequent assault of "devils," or sand-pillars. That it is plentifully supplied with water, we learn from the presence of birds. The cries of the caravane, the "knock-kneed" plover of Egypt, yellow-beaked and black-eyed, resounded in the more barren belts. A lovely little sun-bird (Nectarinia ose?), which the Frenchmen of course called colibri, with ravishing reflections of green and gold, flashed like a gem thrown from shrub to shrub: this oiseau ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... about him do not pretend to be moral, the feeling they betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue. Of the subordinate figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and the weak-kneed saint, Lot. Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every man, and every man's ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Christmas pyes, Their pastry by degrees on high doth rise ... The wheel at home counts in an holiday, Since while the mistress worketh it may play. A tribe of female hands, but manly hearts, Forsake at home their pastry crust and tarts, To kneed the dirt, the samplers down they hurl, Their undulating silks they closely furl. The pick-axe one as a commandress holds, While t'other at her awk'ness gently scolds. One puffs and sweats, the other mutters why Can't you promove your work so fast as I? Some dig, some delve, and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... long clean lines, his small waist and broad shoulders, the swing of his walk. Instead, he walked with the bent-kneed swing of the French infantryman, that tireless but awkward marching step which renders ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his people, in killing a too persistent tiger here or there, in sleeping out in the reeking jungle, or in tracking the Suria Kol raiders who had taken a few heads from their brethren of the Buria clan. He was a knock-kneed, shambling young man, naturally devoid of creed or reverence, with a longing for absolute power which his ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... dough as the peasants in Pindus starve upon. Even this—enough in itself to inflame any English stomach—is reduced to 1/2 lb. a day. As I stood at the gate this afternoon taking my first breath of air, I watched the weak-kneed, lantern-jawed soldiers going round from house to house begging in vain for anything to eat. Yet they say the health of the camp as a whole has improved. This they attribute ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... great simplicity, it is not Cousin Bess. But when did you ever know a half-breed, Duke, who could bear civilization? For that mat ter, they are worse than the savages themselves! Did you notice how knock-kneed he stood, Elizabeth, and what a wild look he had in ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... caused some stir by its bitter and uncompromising attacks upon certain well-known authors and journalists. I looked at the man with some interest. I saw a pale-faced, sandy-haired little creature with a shuffling, weak-kneed gait, who looked as if a touch from a moderately vigorous arm would have swept him altogether out of existence. His manner was affected and unpleasant, his conversation the most disagreeable I ever listened to. He was coarse, not with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and hearing nothing to give it life and spirit. It requires nothing but a dull creature like this, and the washing and dressing left to her, to give a child the rickets, and make it, instead of being a strong straight person, tup-shinned, bow-kneed, or hump-backed; besides other ailments not visible to the eye. By-and-by, when the deformity begins to appear, the doctor is called in, but it is too late: the mischief is done; and a few months of neglect are punished by a life of mortification and sorrow, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... chicken, I shall scrawl Just what I fancy as I strike it, Fairies and Fusiliers, and all Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl Across my verse in the classic way. And, sir, be careful what you say; There are old-fashioned folk still ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... honour—caught at a glance; but as for the better sort, one's beauty's all bother! Why, Sir, when we see some of the most fortunatest men among she-creturs—what poor little minnikens they be! One's a dwarf—another knock-kneed—a third squints—and a fourth might be shown for a hape! Neither, Sir, is it your soft, insinivating, die-away youths, as seem at first so seductive; they do very well for lovers, your honour; but then it's always rejected ones! Neither, your honour, does the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fancies was not very extensive, but he puts himself to considerable pains to make the most of them. In The Lady Mother we find the same ornaments spread out before us, many of them very tawdry at their best. Glapthorne's editor has striven to show that the weak-kneed playwright was a fellow-pupil of John Milton's at St. Paul's. One cannot think of the two names together without calling to mind the "lean and flashy songs" and "scrannel pipes of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business management and far away from the law. There were receiverships, and fortunate was the weak-kneed concern that fell into John MacDonald's hands; it generally meant new life and success for a dying venture. He worked no magic, but he applied a lot of common-sense where it had been scarce before, so that the results seemed much as if a fairy in finance had touched ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the weak-kneed steamer against wind and current was very slow and uncertain, and we never knew when we should reach any given point. Even the mouths of the rivers were not so exciting or important in nature as they used ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... casual enough, for one thing," said Pembroke, deciding to play along with her for the moment. "You're too tense. Also you're a bit knock-kneed, not that it matters. Is that ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... to our great joy, we met two American doctors from Zaichar. One we had mourned for dead and were astonished to see him, shadow-like, stiff-kneed, and sitting uncomfortably on a chair in the middle of the platform. Months before he had pricked himself with a needle while operating on a gangrenous case, and had since lain ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... horrible falsetto squeaked, 'See here, my sweet Signor barber, my excellent Signor surgeon, my honoured Annibal Caracci, my beloved Guido Reni, be off to the devil, and don't ever show yourself here again, if you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of the room, and hurl me down the stairs. But that, you know, was past everything. With ungovernable fury I seized the old fellow and tripped him up, so that his legs stuck uppermost ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and men laid down their lives for England within a dozen miles of Westminster, almost twelve hours after a weak-kneed, panic-stricken Cabinet had passed its word to the people that England ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... as it does as he enters the house," replied the soldier in the same low tone, tinged with the superstition of his race. "I pray God," he continued, "that he turn out no weak-kneed stumbler." ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... was pouring in. Peter went to the window to open it to the altered air, and in doing so beheld at the garden gate the humble "growler" in which a few hours before he had seen Mrs. Ryves take her departure. It was unmistakable—he remembered the knock-kneed white horse; but this made the fact that his friend's luggage no longer surmounted it only the more mystifying. Perhaps the cabman had already removed the luggage—he was now on his box smoking the short pipe that derived relish from inaction paid for. As Peter ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... roar from a hundred throats and a mob rushed on Wallbridge with the apparent intent of tearing him limb from limb. Wallbridge's offer was snapped up at once, but a few weak-kneed holders of the stock threw small blocks on ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... only gasps and groans some more. Maybe I should of felt sorry for him; but, knowin' the sort of sprung kneed near crook he was, I didn't. He was scared mostly, and he was doin' all the sympathizin' for himself that was needed. All of a sudden he braces up and looks at ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... he went on, 'with every old screw in the country. I got broken-winded mares from the ploughs. I collected a regular hospital of spavined, knock-kneed beasts, and he took them from me without a word at thirty pounds apiece. It would have been all right if I had gone no further. But, hang it all! I got to the end of my tether. I declare to you ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... overlook their plotting and rule without bloodshed if that can be done. But it can't be! Unless Pertinax is man enough to strike the blow that shall restore the ancient liberties, then he is better dead before he tries to play the savior! We have a tyrant now. Shall we exchange him for a weak-kneed theorist?" ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... she stayed where she was on the floor, her head resting on the bed in sheer exhaustion, her limbs limp. All thought of going into the garden had left her. Sitting there, stiff-kneed and weary, she thought of Saltire's eyes, and realized that there had come and gone an evening which she must count for ever among the lost treasures of her life. Yet she did not regret it as she rose at last and looked down by the dim light on the pale, beautiful, but composed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... you pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... them into the chest, nor no room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide began to flow, though very calm, and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on shore upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen, and open-kneed, I swam on board in them and my stockings: however, this put me upon rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took no more than I wanted for present use, for I had other things which my eye was more upon; as, first, tools to work with on shore; and it was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... had learned (from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by the roaring hearth, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... by name, Shum's daughter, and seven others, who shall be nameless. Mrs. Shum was a fat, red-haired woman, at least a foot taller than S.; who was but a yard and a half high, pale-faced, red-nosed, knock-kneed, bald-headed, his nose and shut-frill ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the weak-kneed men, sir," the sentry ejaculated, "wouldn't wait until morning to make his get-away. We found him climbing out. Said it would be dangerous in broad daylight. He was in a terrible funk. We had no orders to stop anyone who wanted to leave, so we just jeered him, and let him go. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... spavined horses that can be raked up by hook or crook in the neighborhood. Such a medley was never seen in any other country. Barnum's woolly horse was nothing to these shaggy, stunted, raw-backed, bow-legged, knock-kneed little monsters, offered to the astonished traveler with unintelligible pedigrees in the Icelandic, which, if literally translated, must surely mean that they are a mixed product of codfish and brushwood. The size has but little to do with the age, and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... all useless. The next morning the first one of us was smitten with the plague—a little nurse-girl in the family of Professor Stout. It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental policies. On the chance that she might be the only one, we thrust her forth from the building and ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... Bolshevik-Socialists, Boloists, weak-kneed pacifists, and that whole noisome tribe slunk back into their holes and corners and hiding ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... neither. We got one of your kidney around here now. Kind o' reckons to fix the old man through the girl. Most weak-kneed fellers gamble a pile on petticoats. Wal, I guess you're right out. Marbolt ain't easy that way. You'll be sorry you fetched him from his bed, or ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Strange, and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too, With long and ghostly shanks, forms which once seen, Can ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the 23 January ult. from the City of Charleston; he is about 42 years of age, of a black complexion, SPEAKS GOOD ENGLISH, a little knock-kneed, had on when he went away an iron on one leg, and another on ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... course, starts the runner, and before he can recover, the pitcher has turned and thrown to first. Notwithstanding the strictest prohibition last season of any motion even "calculated" to deceive the runner, there were umpires weak- kneed enough ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figures crowded the galleries—some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; some old, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, some tall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeous wrappers; and all more or ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Lincolnshire man, and the son of one who bred horses. I will myself go down into the stable, and examine into the condition of your horse, so pray remain quiet till I return; it would certainly be a terrible thing to appear at Horncastle on a broken-kneed horse." ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... prototype divined, had the mimic would-be desperado sat trembling on his hoary screw, revolvers ready, while the red eyes of the coach dilated down the road; and as often had the cumbrous ship pitched past unscathed. The week-kneed and weak-minded youth was too vain to feel much ashamed. He was biding his time, he could pick his night; one was too dark, another not dark enough; he had always some excuse for himself when he regained his room, still unstained by crime; and so the unhealthy ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... no doubt that "Uncle Gillison" is old. He is knock-kneed and walks slowly. His long thin hands clutch his chair strongly for support as he continually shifts his position. When he brings his hands to the back of his head, as he frequently does, in conversation, they tremble as with palsy. He enjoys ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... all that Nature had denied, When sudden Fortune made the cub her pride, And gave him twenty thousand pounds a-year, Then, from the pretty Misses you might hear, "His face was not the finest, and, indeed, He was a little, they must own, in-kneed; His shoulders, certainly, were rather high, But, then, he had a most expressive eye; Nor were their hearts by outward charms inclined: Give them the higher beauties ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... enough to hold 'em. And if von could have seen that gal, her eyes like two big burning suns, and her mouth closed like a steel-trap, and her hand as steady on that trigger as the mountain rock behind her! Lord, Bill! what a trembly, knock-kneed, meaching sort of a husband she's a-going to fashion to her hand, one of these days! But PRETTY? None more so. And a-going all to waste ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... had introduced the others more for the purpose of gaining time to study this hulking, limp-kneed man who stood before him like a gorilla crouched for a spring and squeezing a soft straw hat into a shapeless ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... recommend him outside of his assurance, but this at the present moment was most palpably needed. Mrs. Morgan, as Pearl, was stiff with fright. Mrs. Hoagland was husky in the throat. The whole company was so weak-kneed that the lines were merely spoken, and nothing more. It took all the hope and uncritical good-nature of the audience to keep from manifesting pity by that unrest which is the agony ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... been a boy," remarked Whistling Jim, after taking some time to think the matter over. "He wuz right knock-kneed, an' when he walked he walked des like de flo' ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... sitting on a rather sharp rail of the fence, bemoaning Bob's obstinacy in not having the well shot in regular moonlighter's fashion, without being so weak-kneed as to buy the right to do simply what no one ought to be allowed ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... been together some time now, and it isn't my fault if we don't know each other pretty well. I don't care a hang what you have been. I am only concerned with what you are, and whatever that may be, you are not a weak-kneed fool. You have the power to keep straight if you choose, and you are to choose. Understand? I make you this offer with a perfectly open mind, and you are to consider it in the same way. Would you have said because you had once had a nasty tumble that you would never ride again? Of course you wouldn't. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... am I to see you Bill, an' to know that your fool head ain't knocked off by a cannon ball.' He shorely jumped up an' down with pleasure an' he called back: 'The good Lord certainly watches over them that ain't got any sense. Dan, you flat-headed, hump-backed, round-shouldered, thin-chested, knock-kneed, club-footed son of a gun, I was never so glad to see anybody ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... originally a bundle of hemp, and corresponding to a similar word signifying a flock. It became in early times applied to a wide-spread tribe of broad-leaved wayside weeds. They all belong to the botanical order of Polygonaceoe, or "many kneed" plants, because, like the wife of Yankee Doodle, famous in song, they are "double-jointed;" though he, poor man! expecting to find Mistress Doodle doubly active in her household [158] duties, was, as the rhyme says, "disappointed." The name "Dock" was ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... bigger? Has he got legs, and heads, and—and things like that?" "We'll see. When I stand on this chair I'm as big as a giant," but it was all of no avail, and only after Teddy had seen a huge, knock-kneed being in a penny show did he understand what a giant could be like. Then he asked for giant stories on ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... old cuff; an old man. To cuff Jonas; said of one who is knock-kneed, or who beats his sides to keep himself warm in frosty weather; called also ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... man waddle like a duck when afoot; whereat Ben would retort that, for his part, he would rather waddle like a duck than tumble about like a horse with the staggers. He had his opponent there, for poor Thorny did look very like a weak-kneed colt when he tried to walk; but he would never own it, and came down upon Ben with crushing allusions to centaurs, or the Greeks and Romans, who were famous both for their horsemanship and fine limbs. Ben could not answer that, except by proudly referring to the chariot-races copied from the ancients, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... implied death to any who talked of giving out and going back. Thus, in an emergency she would give all to understand that "times were very critical and therefore no foolishness would be indulged in on the road." That several who were rather weak-kneed and faint-hearted were greatly invigorated by Harriet's blunt and positive manner and threat of extreme measures, there ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his mouth, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... impossible for the individual voter to know which is going to be the winning side, but after the first few days of a general election, one side or the other has generally got a more or less decided advantage, and a weak-kneed constituency is sorely tempted to swell the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... every hand and heard at every street corner and from every unionist mouth that everything belonged of right to those who worked and that the idle rich were thieves and robbers. She smiled grimly to watch Mrs. Macanany and viragoes like her pouring oil on the flames and drumming the weak-kneed up and screaming against "blacklegging" as a thing accurst. And when she understood that the fight was over, while apparently it was waxing thicker, she had waited to see what the end would be, longing for something she ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... ships; but we can't renew our food or drink, or ammunition. The end is sure against us. Our original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness. This ship is suspected. It is believed by the rest of the fleet—by ships like the Invincible—that we're weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to the cause. That's not true; but we have either to fight or to run, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... {40} The weak-kneed general, who afterwards sold himself to the British, went back and told Governor Rutledge that the only thing to do was to abandon the fort. The governor, however, was made of better stuff, and, besides, had the greatest faith in Colonel Moultrie. But he did ask his old friend if he ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Patches. "I'm just naturally obliged to 'tend to this here thing what thinks he's a hoss. Come along, you ornery, pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, sway-backed, wooly-haired excuse, you. You ain't got no more manners ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... off across the bright green turf toward the source of all this enchantment, leaving poor Mr. Hobbs braced against the wall, weak-kneed and helpless. If he heard the frantic, though subdued, whistles and the agonized "hi!" of the man from Cook's a minute or two later, he gave no heed to the warning. A glimpse behind might have shown him the error of his ways, reflected in the disappearance of Hobbs's head below the top of the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the devil win? That's not the trouble. Yer afeered, that's what's the matter. Yer too weak-kneed, an' hain't got as much backbone as an angle worm.' That's what I said to 'em, right out straight, too. Now kin ye tell me, Mr. Bishop, why the Lord made some people men instead of makin' 'em chickens fer all ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... where? Some people would say, in the legs. They would try to make you believe that your legs, mere combinations of flesh and blood, could go off by themselves and get bowed, or knock-kneed, or long or short, or slim or fat, or gouty, or palsied, or paralyzed, or rheumatic, or shriveled or anything else just as they wanted to and all of their own option, as though they were a living soul with a living will and not simply so many square inches of inanimate matter. Now, Mr. Cinch, that's ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... because the offer was in so liberal, so conciliatory, so forgiving a spirit; moreover, people were encouraged by the very fact that the President thought it worth while to initiate reconstruction; also many of the more weak-kneed, who desired to see the luring process tried, were gratified by a generous measure. Then, too, not very much thought had yet been given, at least by the people in general, to actual processes of reconstruction; for while many doubted whether there would ever be a chance to reconstruct at ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse |
