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Archness   Listen
Archness

noun
1.
Inappropriate playfulness.  Synonyms: impertinence, perkiness, pertness, sauciness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Archness" Quotes from Famous Books



... letters at a downsitting. And what letters they are, all sealed with the name of JESUS—she will seal now with no other seal. What letters of a strong and sound mind go out under that seal! What a business head! What shrewdness, sagacity, insight, frankness, boldness, archness, raillery, downright fun! And all as full of splendid sense as an egg is full of meat. If Andrew Bonar had only read Spanish, and had edited Teresa's Letters as he has edited Rutherford's, we would have had that ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... experiences and observations, such as they were. In spite of the sense of past omission which had been aroused by his nephew's visit, it had evidently raised his spirits, for he laughed when Aurelia spiced her descriptions with a little playful archness, and his ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on all the ticklish parts of his ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... Slightly bending over a large and cumbrous frame which supported her embroidery, her attitude could no more conceal the grace and lightness of her childlike form, than the glossy ringlets the soft and radiant features which they shaded. There was archness lurking in those dark blue eyes, to which tears seemed yet a stranger; the clear and snowy forehead, the full red lip, and health-bespeaking cheek had surely seen but smiles, and mirrored but the joyous light which filled her gentle heart. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... profusion of ringlets, which, escaping from under her cap, were only confined by a green ribbon from wantoning over her shoulders; her cast of features, soft and feminine, yet not without a certain expression of playful archness, which redeemed their sweetness from the charge of insipidity, sometimes brought against blondes and blue-eyed beauties,—these attracted more admiration from the western youth than either the splendour of her equipments or ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Bond-street, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Bickerstaff[242], and Mr. Thomas Davies. Garrick played round him with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, and, looking up in his face with a lively archness, complimented him on the good health which he seemed then to enjoy; while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle complacency. One of the company not being come at the appointed hour, I proposed, as usual upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... him laughingly if Wilfred the Gazelle would live up to its name this run, but Stark received the pleasantry coldly, having no use for archness ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... without falling in love with Mary Kamworth, I felt prodigiously disposed thereto; she was extremely pretty; had a foot and ancle to swear by, the most silvery toned voice I almost ever heard, and a certain witchery and archness of manner that by its very tantalizing uncertainty continually provoked attention, and by suggesting a difficulty in the road to success, imparted a more than common zest in the pursuit. She was little, a very little blue, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... as H. was, he had a strange defect in his eyes: one of them was smaller than the other, and in his efforts to reduce them to an equality, he sometimes produced a whimsical archness of physiognomy. He did not relish its being noticed, however, and thought the young Irishman ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various



Words linked to "Archness" :   playfulness, impertinence, perkiness, fun, pertness



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