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Oddly   Listen
adverb
Oddly  adv.  
1.
In an odd manner; unevenly. (R.)
2.
In a peculiar manner; strangely; queerly; curiously. "A figure a little more oddly turned." "A great black substance,... very oddly shaped."
3.
(Math.) In a manner measured by an odd number.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Oddly" Quotes from Famous Books



... met; who asked her friendly questions, told her stories, watched her, in the intervals of his talk with others, with eyes full of admiration and a deep amusement which she did not understand, but which set her heart beating oddly and pleasantly, as she asked herself if Angelot could possibly have said anything to this ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... standing framed in the cabin doorway. The girl had given a frightened stare at her, and then had fled inside her room. She could not be coaxed out again. Mrs. Curtis was curious. The one quick look at Mollie seemed oddly to recall some friend of her youth. It was nothing to think of seriously. She would know better when she ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... whiskers beginning to turn gray had walked past Jeff twice, casting a scrutinizing glance towards him. The little boy had noticed the stranger because he was so oddly stiff and very stern looking. At this moment Maggie came up the companion steps and started towards this gentleman with a cry ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave

... their attendance at the public worship of God. Some are so unfortunate as to be always indisposed on the Lord's day, and think nothing so unwholesome as the air of a church. Others have their affairs so oddly contrived, as to be always unluckily prevented by business. With some it is a great mark of wit, and deep understanding, to stay at home on Sundays. Others again discover strange fits of laziness, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... sufficed the two to put up the shutters, and for Stukely to wash his hands, discard his apron, change his coat, and lock up the shop; then the two somewhat oddly contrasted friends wended their way quickly down the narrow street on ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... herself, for evening wear, to a red satin gown trimmed with gold fringe; though this was an article which, for many years, she had coveted in secret. It made her look, when she sported it, like a woman of thirty; but oddly enough, in spite of her taste for fine clothes, she had not a grain of coquetry, and her anxiety when she put them on was as to whether they, and not she, would look well. It is a point on which history has not been explicit, but ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... that their happiness and glory were dependent on the prosperity of the throne which he had raised, consolidated, and aggrandized by them and for them, and that the love of France was their first duty. This must have sounded oddly in the ears of some of the members; for at this time Dutchmen from Holland, &c, Germans from the Hanse Towns, Swiss from the Valais, which was now incorporated with France, and Italians from the confiscated states of the church had taken their seats in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,—inventing or finding them,—since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,—and called for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a man name an innocent ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... answering some question of her mother's. They were so oddly alike and so curiously different, and both in their several ways so fine. Eleanor was dark like his own mother. Perhaps she did a little lack Lady Ella's fine reserves; she could express more, she could feel more acutely, she might easily be ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... passages have disappeared from the revised edition, as well as some curious outbursts of that motiveless despair which Byron made fashionable not long after. Nor are there wanting touches of fleshliness which strike us oddly as coming from Wordsworth. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... the Montgomery clique at table, anyway; but she heard them talking and laughing during the meal, and afterward some of them passed where Nancy sat and looked at her oddly. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... thought the women very nice, but less interesting than the men, possibly because they were women. They certainly looked more intelligent than the average one sat with during the trying half- hour after dinner; but their conversation was fragmentary, and they oddly suggested having left their personality at home and taken their shell out to dinner. Betty also was interested to observe that their composite expression was a curious mingling of fatigue, unselfishness, and peremptoriness. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... perhaps twice a week, sure of a welcome and a good meal. On the occasion so significant to Mark she had been there when he got in from work, helping his sisters Sophy and Hannah with that careless disposition of iron knives, great china sugar bowl, oddly assorted plates, and thick cups that was known as ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... of devotion," all so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock- in-trade locked up if not carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva's AEgis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... her eyes for a moment and turned to bow with grave politeness to Gilbert. It was, oddly enough, the colonel who brought forward a chair ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... absence of genial relations with the entirety of the phenomenon discussed, the clutching at some paltry mechanical aspect of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by a plus b, and the practical denial of everything that only appeals to vaguer sentiment, show a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and explicit processes, and so wedded to the superficial and flagrantly insufficient, that one begins to wonder whether in the philosophic and scientific spheres the same mind can have wrought out ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Gentlemen, who were sitting at the first Table, kept their Seats composed and easy enough, only concern'd to see all the House in such a fright; it was true, they said, the Candles burnt dim and very oddly, but they could not perceive they burnt blue, except one of those over the Chimney, and that on the Table, which was relighted after the Fellow ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... sat down at his feet on the fender-curb, her tiny hand still clinging to his. "This is a real treat," she said, laying her head against his knee with a gesture oddly girlish. "It isn't often, is it, that we have ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... rather hard. You try it.' She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... Martineau. "Oddly enough, I have never thought about that question before. At least, not from ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... matters do him hurt, 375 I think there's little reason for't. He that imposes an oath, makes it, Not he that for convenience takes it: Then how can any man be said To break an oath he never made? 380 These reasons may, perhaps, look oddly To th' Wicked, though th' evince the Godly; But if they will not serve to clear My honour, I am ne'er the near. Honour is like that glassy bubble 385 That finds philosophers such trouble, Whose least part crack't, the whole does fly, And wits are ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... extraordinary success, one of those human beings from whom all men shrink instinctively, and before whom they easily lose their fluency of speech and confidence of thought. Unnaturally still eyes, of an uncertain colour, gazed with a terrifying fixedness upon a human world, and were oddly set in the large and perfectly colourless face that was like an exaggerated waxen mask. The pale lips did not meet evenly, the lower one protruding, forced, outward by the phenomenal jaw that has descended to this day in the House of Austria. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... to his own annoyance, more than desirable as a husband owing to the Wanless collieries and a few other trifles of the same kind; the Bishop of Markborough; Canon France and his sister; a young poet whose very delicate muse had lodged itself oddly in the frame of an athlete; a high official in the Local Government Board, Mr. Spearman, whom Rose regarded with distrust as likely to lead Hugh into too much talk about workhouses; Lady Helen's two girls just out, as dainty and well-dressed, as gayly and innocently sure of themselves ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of this oddly named novel is too complicated to describe at length. It opens with the conferment of the C.M.G. on Kuli Khan Abbas in 1903, an incident of which the anonymous author might have made a good deal ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... had sat by him a few minutes I passed my arm over his big soft shoulder—wherever you touched him you found equally little firmness—and said in a tone of which the suppliance fell oddly on my own ear: "Come back to town with me, old friend—come back and spend the evening." I wanted to hold him, I wanted to keep him, and at Waterloo, an hour later, I telegraphed possessively to the Mulvilles. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... their heads. I was unfortunate in losing nearly all the white chickens from the first crosses; so that black prevailed with the grandchildren; but they were much diversified in colour, some being sooty, others mottled, and one blackish chicken had its feathers oddly tipped and barred ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... oddly, she could not but be aware that both Mrs Basil and Maisie Maidan were nice women. The curious, discounting eye which one woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that Mrs Basil was very good to Edward and Mrs Maidan very good ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... stars and sent them shivering up at me again. As I neared the mill house, I could hear voices through its scanty boarding, and decided, for the moment, to go on, following the bed of the creek, when an intonation, oddly familiar, brought me up like the crack of a whip. It is strange the power that sounds have to transport us, and again I saw a withered woman with straw-colored hair and a small, oblong bundle in a patch-work quilt. But, as I drew ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Superior of the Jesuits, also accompanied the Bishop. His close, black soutane contrasted oddly with the gray, loose gown of the Recollet. He was a meditative, taciturn man,—seeming rather to watch the others than to join in the lively conversation that went on around him. Anything but cordiality and brotherly love reigned between the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... I didn't know," said Sam. "But I do know now. I asked the first person I met after I got off the train and oddly enough he turned out to be the owner himself. It was old Clifford—Isaiah, Elisha, Hosea—Jeremiah, that's it. I knew it was ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... of rather faulty music. Jacqueline thought the songs wonderful. It was her introduction to the sensuous, discordant harmonies of Strauss and de Bussy, of whom Channing was an ardent disciple. They puzzled and stirred her oddly. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... observe that the young woman sat with head turned away, gazing out over the rail at the shore, her chin cupped in her hands, her thoughts apparently far away. Strange as it may seem her obvious indifference hurt me oddly, my only comprehension being that she did not in the least care; that in fact she had already entirely dismissed me from her mind. This supposition, whether true or false, instantly hardened me to my fate, and I stared ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... restaurants to be doing business as usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the expensive hotels were full. It is not the real France, of course, yet it seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist. Oddly enough the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been known. But so it was. Most of these soldiers were here ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... flock to the stenciled walls and carpeted floors of our comfortable, middle-class Protestant meeting-houses. They are not attracted by Tiffany glass windows, nor the vanilla-flavored music of a mixed quartet, nor the oddly assorted "enrichments" we have dovetailed into a once puritan order of worship. That is true, but it is also true that these are they who need the Gospel; also that these folk do influence the time-current ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... almost beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument on the seventh day of March, 1849. When able to toddle about, his playmates were plants rather than animals. Oddly enough his first doll was a cactus plant that he carried about proudly until one day he fell ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... the morning of the move had, oddly enough, nothing to do with our departure for the farmhouse. The moment breakfast was over I began the day by making Emily as smart and nice-looking as I could, to go to the doctor's with the purse. She had her best silk frock ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... do with a man like that? Had we not now come to my turning, Duke's Avenue, where he bade me good-bye, I might have discovered that he did not think Lord KITCHENER an imbecile, Mr. BALFOUR a mere salary-hunter, and Mr. ASQUITH a traitor. To such an oddly constructed mind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various

... the tinsel of Venetian gold and the richness of Genoa velvet, Florentine tapestry, and Persian arras? If so, we will ascend to the drawing-rooms and gallery. But stay a moment and permit this lady and oddly-dressed gentleman to pass us on their exit from the gallery, where they have been rehearsing some charming entertainment for the evening, or getting up some piece of fanciful mummery to amuse the idle guests who have congregated around the garden fountain. [Picture: Couple exiting from gallery] ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... street ahead. She guessed, by the curl of his nostril, that it was only present to him as an unpleasant odor to be got through as quickly as possible; but she was wrong. He had another thought. This time, oddly ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... in contact with the Cleavers and their friends. Their views never commended themselves to me wholly; but at least they were spiritual and not material. And election is a fact, although they express it oddly—and so is reprobation—and so is what they say of free will, and so is conversion. It is true that we bring natures into the world which are moulded by circumstances and by their own tendencies, as clay in ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... he began slowly, "somethin' about—about that girl last night talkin' about a lady named Diana Manners—an English lady, sorta got me thinkin'!" He drew himself up and looked oddly at Clark, "I had a family once," he ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... opened, and the tallish young man stood on the threshold again, this time social and affable. His distraitness, oddly enough, had all gone. He greeted the two in the smoking-room as though he had seen them for the first time that evening; expressed his pleasure at being in their company; inquired after their healths and late ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... proud ignorance Learning call? We oddly Plato's paradox make good, Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all; Remembrance is our treasure and our food; Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools: ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and what I cannot conceive I cannot remember); so that you may just as well give me a new name and face the fact that I am a new person and that the old Bernard Shaw is as dead as mutton. Thus, oddly enough, the conventional belief in the matter comes to this: that if you wish to live for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned, since the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... though we were not living in the Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly no satisfaction. The presence of armed House police at every door, and in the front rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and is oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already created her first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately armed—with the lessons of ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... gentlemen, and seemed to promise making a good figure in life. But, during my absence, he had acquir'd a habit of sotting with brandy; and I found by his own account, and what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his arrival at New York, and behav'd very oddly. He had gam'd, too, and lost his money, so that I was oblig'd to discharge his lodgings, and defray his expenses to and at Philadelphia, which prov'd extremely inconvenient ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... always wore a veil, and this was now pushed up in several folds, to facilitate tea-drinking. She could feel the tears wetting it, so that it stuck to her cheeks under her eyes. She was furious with herself, but she could not stop the tears—she felt oddly weak and shaken. Agatha had flounced off with the teapot to make a fresh brew, Albert was leaning gloomily back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, Mrs. Hill was murmuring—"I hope you like fancy-work—I am very fond of fancy-work—I have made a worsted kitten." Joanna could ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... answering well the examination questions in Paley, by doing Euclid well, and by not failing miserably in Classics, I gained a good place among the oi polloi or crowd of men who do not go in for honours. Oddly enough, I cannot remember how high I stood, and my memory fluctuates between the fifth, tenth, or twelfth, name on the list. (Tenth in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Oddly enough, his first thought, as he hung there, was not for the man he had come to save, but for that which had turned him pale when first he glanced through the telescope. The foremast across which he lay was complete almost ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of the ways in which our present school methods of teaching girls generate a menorrhagia and its consequent evils. Miss A——, a healthy, bright, intelligent girl, entered a female school, an institution that is commonly but oddly called a seminary for girls, in the State of New York, at the age of fifteen. She was then sufficiently well-developed, and had a good color; all the functions appeared to act normally, and the catamenia were ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... Bargeton's past life, a dreary chronicle which must be given if Lucien's position with regard to the lady is to be comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the previous winter a newcomer had brought some interest into Mme. de Bargeton's monotonous life. The place of controller of excise fell vacant, and M. de Barante appointed a man whose adventurous life was a sufficient passport ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... been a good deal of ice-pressure in different directions to-day. Oddly enough, a meridian altitude of the sun gave 79 deg. 45'. We have therefore drifted only 8' southward during the four days since March 4th. This slow drift is remarkable in spite of the high winds. If there should be land to the north? I begin more and more to speculate on this possibility. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... first spilling of blood the skua gulls assemble, and soon, for them at least, there is a gruesome satisfaction to be reaped. Oddly enough, they don't seem to excite the dogs; they simply alight within a few feet and wait for their turn in the drama, clamouring and quarrelling amongst themselves when the spoils accrue. Such incidents were happening constantly to-day, and seriously ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... day! Jeremy, suddenly waking, realised this with a confusion of feeling as though he were sentenced to the dentist's, but, oddly enough, looked forward to his visit. Going to school, one had, of course, long ago perceived, was a mixed business; but the balance was now greatly to the good. It was a step in the right direction towards ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... was its power to give people whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been able to do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their wishes come true; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things to wish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. In the end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called 'a very tight place indeed', and the Psammead consented to help them out of it in return for their promise never never to ask it to grant them any more wishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... himself with his back to it, to my astonishment did not give way. His full bourgeois face was pale; yet peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution. And oddly—very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a prisoner, he must be in the wrong—I sympathised with him. Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... think we shall miss you—in that way. Oddly enough—I suppose Matilda was on her mettle—the house seemed quieter when I came home. The children were in bed. I smelt something good from the kitchen. Don't imagine that we shall not be able to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... Oddly enough, it was to Genevieve Mallory that Macdonald went for consolation when he learned that Sheba had left town. He had always found it very pleasant to drop in for a chat with her, and she saw to it that he met the same friendly ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... foreign holes!" as she would call them, contemptuously. Miss Terry was, in short, neither clever nor strong minded, but so long as she could be in the company of her beloved Mildred, whom she regarded with mingled reverence and affection, she was perfectly happy. Oddly enough, this affection was reciprocated, and there probably was nobody in the world for whom Mrs. Carr cared so much as her cousin by marriage, Agatha Terry. And yet it would be impossible to imagine ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... been and how oddly he was dressed! In her innocent way she had never believed that there were any civilized settlements at all, and she had put the belief in them down to the credulity of the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white, looked like two big broken flowers, driving and drifting upon the gale. Nor is such a poetic fancy inappropriate, for there was something oddly romantic about this inrush of air and light after a long, leaden and unlifting day. Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like a fire from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... the proper representative, as being, with consent of all, the perpetual president. He reminded him how many quarrels had been nightly undertaken and departed from on the ensuing morning, without any suitable consequences—said, "that people began to talk of the place oddly; and that, for his own part, he found his own honour so nearly touched, that he had begun to think he himself would be obliged to bring somebody or other to account, for the general credit of the Well; and now, just when the most beautiful occasion had arisen to put every ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... up and down the clean, smart-looking deck of what has been our pleasant floating home during these past four weeks, I suddenly perceive a short, squat pyramid on the shore, standing out oddly enough among the low-roofed houses. If it had only been red instead of gray, it might have passed for the model of the label on Bass's beer—bottles; but, even as it is, I feel convinced that there is a story connected with it: and so it proves, for this ugly, most unsentimental-looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... sun were greatly grown, and he looked like a man of the woods. He held on his shoulder a boy of about three or four years old, and two sleeves of a garment, filled [with something], were suspended like a collar round his neck; he cut a strange appearance, and was oddly dressed, I was greatly surprised, and asked him, 'O, friend, who art thou, and of what country art thou the inhabitant, and in what a strange condition do I see thee?' The young man began to weep ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... right," said Mrs. Hardyng; "and it has struck me oddly enough that we, who are so extremely opposite in every respect, should find so many subjects upon which to agree. I have often grieved over these foibles of our sex, not having failed to observe, with regret, that there ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... He looked oddly, Nan thought, at the doctor. "I don't know but that is it, Doc," he said. "That sea voyage may ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... tracked his daughter with considerable stealth, adopting unconsciously the elongated and nervous stride of a theatrical villain. He saw her meet a young man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, whose clothing was mysteriously theatrical, and whose general shape, when it could be glimpsed, was oddly familiar. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... at Meshach Milburn a little oddly, found him, on acquaintance, a man of sense; but the McLanes who called were either supercilious or studiously avoided ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... had certainly darkened for a moment as he came face to face with the two. He was correctly enough dressed in gray tweeds and thick walking boots, but somehow or other his sallow face and dark, plentiful hair, seemed to go oddly with his country clothes. ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... The Whirlwind's village. Though aided by the high-bowed "mountain saddle," I could scarcely keep my seat on horseback. Before we left the fort we hired another man, a long-haired Canadian, with a face like an owl's, contrasting oddly enough with Delorier's mercurial countenance. This was not the only re-enforcement to our party. A vagrant Indian trader, named Reynal, joined us, together with his squaw Margot, and her two nephews, our dandy friend, The Horse, and his younger brother, The Hail Storm. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... been taken there first by Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and had been himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... Oddly shaped rocks, dimly seen, strengthened the impression of wind-abraded topography. Rocks were reddish, overlain by smears of bright yellow. Lot of trouble placing all that flowers of sulfur, but we postulated a liquid sulfur-sulfur dioxide-carbon ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins

... attitude was that of a person who listens, either to the external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of thought. A close criticism might have detected signs proving that she was intent on the latter alternative. Moreover, as was shown by what followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... and flourished their spears in a threatening manner. These last Grabantak quieted with a look. The incident undoubtedly surprised that stern parent, but also afforded him some amusement. He said it was an insult that must be avenged. Oddly enough he made use of an expression which sounded curiously familiar to Leo's ears, as translated by Anders. "The insult," said Grabantak, "could only ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... oddly by this practice. Who he is, no other regular doctor knows. But Dr. Floddin has an honest face, and keeps a little drug store on State street below Eighteenth. He usually charges fifty cents a visit, which is all he believes his services to be worth. This piece of quackery ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... sum in her own name which would enable us to live; although not as we had lived by a great deal. We took an apartment in an unfashionable quarter of the city, and thanks to the lawyer—who proved himself a real and true friend—I was given a minor position in a small bank. Oddly enough, considering my former life, I liked the work, it interested me, and during the next few years I was made, by successive promotions, bookkeeper, teller, and, at last, assistant cashier. No news came from the absconder. The police had lost track of him, and it seemed ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... assortment of small hardware, varying his musical accompaniment by whistling instead of singing. His visitor looked at him rather oddly. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... conspicuous; and this would perhaps have decided as to "the Chair" in that respect for all the future. But Palmer we all knew to be too much of the old Tory for any surrender of that kind, and there was, besides, just a trace of the oddly positive in him, although otherwise a genial good fellow, which held out promise of sport. We were only half gratified. He appeared in a plain quaker-like but much braided coat, which was understood to have gone for dress in the good old times of Charles ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... sun. Her only watch had stopped long since, resenting the vibrations of the wheel. She passed Peronne—uprooted railways and houses falling head foremost into the river, and beyond it, side roads led her to a small deserted village, oddly untouched by shell or fire. Here the doors swung and banged, unlatched by any human fingers, the windows, still draped with curtains, were shut, and no face looked out. Here she ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... her some morning, and touch my hat to her. Then the princess will bend her fair head to me with courteous surprise not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub me, in fact. All this for thy sake, O Pasha of the Snapt Axle-tree!... How oddly things fall out! Ten minutes ago I was called down to the parlor—you know the kind of parlors in farm-houses on the coast, a sort of amphibious parlor, with sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce branches in ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... ridge," said the toothless old woman, pointing with a long finger, "is the Clarks'. You can't miss it," and I thought she looked at me oddly. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... Christian love." This is the hall-mark of all false teachers, that they not only pervert the pure doctrine but also fail in doing good. Their foundation vitiated, they can only build wood, hay, and stubble. Oddly enough, the false apostles who were such earnest champions of good works never required the work of charity, such as Christian love and the practical charity of a helpful tongue, hand, and heart. Their only requirement was ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... Oddly treated, too. Tom thought it would be a pretty lady-like essay, and said so; then sat astounded at what he saw and heard. Her face—this schoolgirl's face—grew pallid, her eyes mournful, her voice and manner sublime, as she summoned this Monster to the bar of God's justice and the humanity ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... distinctions is its somewhat shrubby and evergreen character; of the whole genus, so far as it is at present comprehended, it is the only species with such traits; its foliage, too, is of leathery substance, and compares oddly with the herb-like leaves of its relatives; it is, moreover, as indicated by its specific name, of a glaucous hue; and otherwise, as may be seen in the following description, there exist well marked dissimilarities. But, what is of more importance, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... Mr. Fortescue built up another rounded structure of words, had a likeness to each of her parents, but these elements were rather oddly blended. She had the quick, impulsive movements of her mother, the lips parting often to speak, and closing again; and the dark oval eyes of her father brimming with light upon a basis of sadness, or, since she was too young to have acquired ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... the young minister's eye suddenly found itself arrested by a name on a cover. There were a dozen narrow volumes in uniform binding, huddled together under a cardboard label of "Eminent Women Series." Oddly enough, one of these bore the title "George Sand." Theron saw there must be some mistake, as he took the book down, and opened it. His glance hit by accident upon the name of Chopin. Then he read attentively until almost ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. When pressed ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... and went, but no Mr. L'Hommedieu appeared; another, and I began to grow seriously uneasy; a third, and a dreadful thing happened. Late in the afternoon Mrs. L'Hommedieu, dressed very oddly for her, came sliding in at the front door, and with an appealing smile at the hall-boy, who wished but dared not ask her for the key which made these visits possible, glided by to her old rooms, and, finding the door unlocked, went softly in. Her appearance is worth description, ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... Tapster now recalled the one letter Flossy had written to him just before the actual hearing of the divorce suit. It had been a wild, oddly worded appeal to him to take her back, not—as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter—because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter as shameless and unwomanly in the extreme, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... weird picture that the oddly contrasted party presented as they raced across the clearing of this forgotten isle toward a jungle as primitive as when "the evening and the morning were the third day." An American girl of the highest social caste borne in the arms of that most vicious of all ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... coming so near and yet missing the mark at which he had aimed, if it were not that he lived and died in the belief that he was right in his assertion that the great Father of Waters rose in the lake which he, oddly enough, named Itasca. Oddly, because Itasca is a name given by the Indians to the mysteries of their religion and necromantic arts, and Schoolcraft, by his decided statements in regard to the lake, succeeded in enveloping in mystery ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... words she felt oddly shy. She looked down at the pavement, then, with a flutter of the eyelids, up at ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... to tell, but the others broke in and sang her praises in a sort of chorus, in which bears, pigs, pies, and oranges were oddly mixed. Great satisfaction was expressed by all, and Tilly and Prue were so elated by the commendation of Ma and the aunts, that they set forth their dinner, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... up from the table upon which she had been so industriously cutting, and holding in one hand an oddly shapen sleeve, she gave a demonstrative wave at me, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... utensils for domestic use. They tan the skins of the animals they kill and make their shoes or moccasins out of them. These are very thin and do not last long. As, regards their dress, both men and women are oddly attired. Their clothes are fashioned somewhat after the manner of ours, but the sewing is all on the outside and the stitches are very large. The selvedge of the cloth, (which they are always careful to secure when buying ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul

... Oddly enough at the very moment when we have thus had reimpressed upon us the uncertainty of our outward mechanical defenses against the elements, we have been making a curious addition to our knowledge of inner means of defense. The science of medicine has taken several impressive strides in recent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... believed, with fair accuracy. The large building in the center would be the central control room housing whatever apparatus of any kind was needed in the working of this space ship. There were smaller buildings, most of them conical, looking oddly like beehives, which doubtless housed ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks

... moment. He stood there with darkening face, an obstinate, almost a threatening figure. Passers-by looked with a gleam of interest at the oddly assorted trio, whose conversation was obviously far removed from the ordinary chatter of the loungers about the place. One or two made an excuse to linger by—it seemed possible that there might be developments. Heneage, however, disappointed them. He turned suddenly upon his heel ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... however, had a "will of iron," or, in other words, he thought the money ought to be paid as well as conditioned to be paid. This despotic construction of the bargain had given rise to unheard-of dissatisfaction in Leapthrough, as indeed might have been expected; but it was, oddly enough, condemned with some heat even in Leaplow itself, where it was stoutly maintained by certain ingenious logicians, that the only true way to settle a bargain to pay money, was to make a new one for a less sum whenever the amount fell due; a plan that, with a proper ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense—had not the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on the floor ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... than any other writer, and he does so not always in a devout way. He seemed at last to use the word "God" as if it were an expletive or mere intensive like a Greek ge [gamma epsilon], meaning "very much" or "very good," as where he so oddly calls the North-East wind "the wind of God." And he betrays a most unclerical interest in physical torture and physical voluptuousness (Hypatia, The Saint's Tragedy, Saint Maura, Westward Ho!), though it is true that his real nature is both ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... manners, Fathom has an interest of its own in that it reveals a new side of its author. We think of Smollett, generally, as a rambling storyteller, a rational, unromantic man of the world, who fills his pages with his own oddly-metamorphosed acquaintances and experiences. The Smollett of Count Fathom, on the contrary, is rather a forerunner of the romantic school, who has created a tolerably organic tale of adventure out of his own brain. Though this is notably ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... an hour afterwards she saw a very small person crossing the rose-garden. If there was something in his hands that he was eating, Miss Salome never asked Anne about it. It was not her way to ask Anne questions. It was not Anne's way to ask her. The letter to John was finished, oddly enough, without further mention of—it. Miss Salome got the broom and swept the bare big room carefully. She hummed a little as she worked. Out in the kitchen Anne ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... of any certain case of intrigue or conjugal misbehaviour amongst the cottage folk. The people seem to leave that sort of thing to the employing classes. It scandalizes them to hear of it. They despise it. Oddly enough, this may be partly due to the want of a feminine ideal, such as is developed by help of our middle-class arts and recognized in our conventions. True, the business of making both ends meet provides the labourer and his wife with enough ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... morocco, and entitled 'The Dream of Vergier;' a book full of wisdom and logic, and written by some venerable clerk, during the reign of Charles V., king of France. I looked for the page that had struck my fancy, but—alas! how oddly one's memory changes with the lapse of years—instead of finding, in that grave old book, the just panegyric of woman's goodness, I discovered, to my great surprise, only a violent satire all spiced with texts borrowed from St. Augustine, the Roman laws and the ancient canons, with this ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... found stored up even in poor men's cottages; while a new beauty, a gaiety, was abroad, as all the conjoint arts branched out exuberantly in a reign of quiet, delighted labour, at the prompting, as it seemed, of the singular being who came suddenly and oddly to Auxerre to be the centre of so pleasant a period, though in truth he made but a ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... noiseless track cut the silvery ripples; a sweet contralto voice, with guitar accompaniment, salutes the ear; stately palaces cast long, mysterious shadows upon the water; the Bridge of Sighs arches the canal between the palace and prison close at hand; oddly-rigged craft from the far East float lazily at anchor in the open harbor; the domes of lofty churches are outlined against the dark blue sky; while the proud columns of St. Mark and St. Theodore stand like sentinels ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... The oddly appearing character had not moved from his place, but stood, still looking after the stranger—the brier pipe in his mouth, the Irish ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... across Lac Tremblant on my way home to Dudley Wilbraham's gold mine at La Chance, after an absence of months. It was halfway to dark, and the bitter November wind blew dead in my teeth. Slaps of spray from flying wave-crests blinded me with gouts of lake water, that was oddly warm till the cutting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on my bare hands and stinging face, that I had to keep dabbing on my paddling shoulder to get my eyes clear in order that I might stare in front of my ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... could do, she did. No wheedling of Mrs. Wilmot's could draw any further comment from her, and she said nothing to Ingram either for or against what she supposed now to be the desire, the honourable desire of his heart. Oddly enough, though it was against all her upbringing, Chevenix had so far succeeded in impressing her that she rather respected Sanchia the more for being cool now that rehabilitation was in full sight, and practically within touch of her hand. Chevenix, in fact, had made her see that Sanchia ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... Oddly enough Lavinia, who was usually full of chatter, had to-night little to say. Her schoolmates rallied her on her ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... Oddly enough I heard of another boy who exercised the same kind of cruelty and destructiveness over another common a few miles distant. Walking across it I spied two boys among the furze bushes, and at the same moment they saw ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... took Evelyn's hands between hers and gazed into her face so earnestly that Evelyn feared her innermost thoughts were being read. Then, with a little touch of wilfulness, that came oddly from one so old and venerable, the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... racing; the air was cold on his face as he rushed out. But it brought to his nostrils odors strange and yet strangely familiar. He was oddly light-headed, irresponsible as a child as he shouted and danced and threw himself high in the air, to laugh childishly at the pure pleasure of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... the unequal rhythmic differences of the two hands, and justly says the piece does not work out any special technical matter. This study is the most lauded of all. Yet I cannot help agreeing with Niecks, who writes of it—he oddly enough places it in the key of E: "A duet between a He and a She, of whom the former shows himself more talkative and emphatic than the latter, is, indeed, very sweet, but, perhaps, also somewhat tiresomely ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... while the chain made a rattling noise, and she lay quite slack and swung oddly; and then there were little boiling and eddying places in the water, and the water seemed to come up from underneath sometimes, and altogether it behaved very strangely, and this was the turn of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have often wondered, in the light of ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... never accepted his invitations, thinking that my nerves belonged to the living, not to the dead, and I had better finish my education as a nurse before I began that of a surgeon. But I never met the little man skipping through the hall, with oddly shaped cases in his hand, and an absorbed expression of countenance, without being sure that a select party of surgeons were at work in the dead house, which idea was a rather trying one, when I knew the subject was some person whom I had ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... schoolroom window, looking out on the snowy landscape, and crying, while all the rest were at play. "E." was younger than she, and her tender heart was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which she found the oddly-dressed, odd-looking little girl that winter morning, as "sick for home she stood in tears," in a new strange place, among new strange people. Any over-demonstrative kindness would have scared the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... picked up on the quai in Paris for a franc or two," replied Miss Madden. "I arranged and harmonized them—and, oddly enough, the result is rather Keltic, don't ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... Oddly enough, "Shenandoah" was a failure in Boston. Three eminent managers, A. M. Palmer, T. Henry French, and Henry E. Abbey, in succession had had options on the play, and they were a unit in believing that it would ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... considered it one of the most profoundly logical and convincing political treatises ever written. The various leading firms, however, to whom it was afterwards submitted with a view to publication, would appear, oddly enough, to have doubted its complete suitability to the tastes and demands of the reading public in the present century; for they invariably replied to Ernest's inquiries that they would be happy to undertake its production for the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen



Words linked to "Oddly" :   curiously, funnily, peculiarly



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