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Awry   /ərˈaɪ/   Listen
Awry

adjective
1.
Turned or twisted toward one side.  Synonyms: askew, cockeyed, lopsided, skew-whiff, wonky.  "His wig was, as the British say, skew-whiff"
2.
Not functioning properly.  Synonyms: amiss, haywire, wrong.  "Has gone completely haywire" , "Something is wrong with the engine"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Awry" Quotes from Famous Books



... whatever hands were laid upon them, until the hands of the accused came to touch them, and then they would revive immediately: and it was found, that various kinds of natural actions, done by many of the accused in or to their own bodies, as leaning, bending, turning awry, or squeezing their hands, or the like, were presently attended with the like things preternaturally done upon the bodies of the afflicted, though they were so far asunder, that the afflicted could not at all observe the accused."—Magnalia, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... before it, leaning forward, his long arms outstretched along its edge. The table was pushed almost against the wall, and in its center stood Shenton, laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. His curly hair was damp and clung to his white forehead. His blouse was soiled, his kilt awry. One short stocking had fallen down over his shoe. Manoel was also ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... mean to be sentimental when I say that the sound is to me like the march of human civilisation and human history. Outwardly there is little to justify my grandiose comparison. You see only a heaving mass of men and women who are not very well clad. The men are unshaven, the women awry with a day's labour. They move on with that beautiful optimism of an American crowd which has been trained in the belief that there is always plenty of room ahead. There is very little pushing. Occasionally a band of young boys hustle their way through the crowd; but a New York ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... on a rustic shelf, Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry, Sang impolitely, as though by himself, Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry: "Back through a hundred, hundred years Hear the waves as they climb the piers, Hear the howl of the silver seas, Hear the thunder. Hear the gongs of holy ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... taken me, I daresay, for a deuced well-bred fellow, and genteel withal. All a mistake. I love low company, and am a bit of a ready-made blackguard.' He pulls up his collar, twitches his neckcloth, sets his hat awry, and with a mad humorous look in his eyes, is soon in the thickest of the crowd of rustic revellers. He jests, gambols, dances, soon to quarrel and fight. He roughly handles a brawny waggoner, a practised boxer, in a regular scientific set-to; gives his defeated ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... and went out of the room, and a moment later Leslie heard the front door slam. Elizabeth, standing at the head of the stairs, heard it also, and turned away, with a new droop to her usually valiant shoulders. Her world, too, had gone awry, that safe world of protection and cheer and kindliness. First had come Nina, white-lipped and shaken, and Elizabeth had had to face the fact that there were such things as treachery and the queer hidden things that men did, and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... they rambled, and the steps which the balusters protected—ah, how eloquently the Major's sword clanked upon these as he descended! But the high-pitched roof remains, with its three dormer windows still leaning awry, and the plaster porch where a grotesque, half-human face grins at you from the middle of a fluted sea-shell. Standing before it with half-closed eyes, I behold the steps again, and our great man at the head of them receiving his hat from ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... would have dressed their heads awry, but she was very good, and dressed them perfectly well. They were almost two days without eating, so much they were transported with joy; they broke above a dozen of laces in trying to be laced up close, that they might have a fine slender shape, and they were continually at their looking-glass. ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... origin of these long detrital promontories, which form, when viewed from the heights on either side, so peculiar a feature in the landscape, and which, were they directly opposite, instead of being set down a mile awry, would shut up the opening altogether, has not yet been satisfactorily accounted for. One special theory assigns their formation to the agency of the descending tide, striking in zig-gig style, in consequence of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... taken it on myself to bring him there, before her bar. It is this which I shall do, and the end is not with me, but with right and law and order, with the weal of society, yes, and with the man's own proper reaping of the harvest which he sowed! Else he also is monstrous, and there is nothing not awry." He paused, made a slight and dignified gesture with his hands, and went on. "I have done that which I had to do. I abide the consequences. But it is hard to bring trouble on you here, and to bring great trouble on—on one other. I wish you to know that, though I go my way, I go with ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakspeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... Cyril returned to his lodgings in the Strand. The next day he was walking near Whitehall when a carriage dashed out at full speed, and, as it came along, he caught sight of the Duke of Albemarle, who looked in a state of strange confusion. His wig was awry, his coat was off, and his face was flushed and excited. As his eye fell on Cyril, he shouted out to the postillions to stop. As they ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... thought much of these outside things; but she did now—at least she tried her best. There was not a lock unsmoothed in her fair hair, not a fold awry in her silks or laces, and not a trace of agitation visible in her manner or countenance when Mrs. Grey opened her ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... that the wind alternately blew hot and cold, at least by contrast, and the deep, leaden skies were suffused with a peculiar mist that made him see all objects in a distorted fashion. Everything was out of proportion. Some were too large and some too small. Either the world was awry or his own faculties had become discolored and disjointed. While his interest in his daily toil decreased and his thoughts were vague and distant, his curiosity, nevertheless, was keen and concentrated. He knew that something unusual ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... picture of exhaustion and resignation. The mule, on the contrary, has always the limbs drawn up, as if from cramp; the knees are bent, and the hoofs drawn inward towards the body; the head is thrown back, the mouth awry, and the teeth firmly clenched. As they often lie side by side, this difference is striking. Whence it arises, it is difficult to say; but it would seem to denote, that the sufferings of the mule are more intense, and its tenacity of life greater, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... of his,—one fancies there is a curiously dry look about it! The unnaturally yellow skin resembles a piece of good-for-nothing wrinkled parchment. The lips partake of the prevailing sallow tint, and the mouth hangs a little awry. From the cloth in which the head is so elaborately bandaged up strays forth, here and there, an arid lock of hair. The lack of united expression in his features produces an effect seldom observable in a living face. The eyes are lustreless, and densely ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... whatever we do, is liable to the criticisms of those who wish to represent it awry. If we recommend measures in a public message, it may be said that members are not sent here to obey the mandates of the President, or to register the edicts of a sovereign. If we express opinions in conversation, we have then our Charles Jenkinsons, and back-door ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the following morning, left the trust company for the last time. He was in telephonic communication with Prescott, who, in turn, was in touch with their lawyer. Unfortunately, the president of the company had gone out of town over Sunday, so that again their plans went awry. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... are!" cried his sister. "Fancy living beside people in this country and not knowing them. Can't you see that we must not let things get awry that way? We must all pull together. Tom is fearfully strong on that, and he is right, too, I suppose, although it is trying at times. Now we begin to climb a bit here. Then there are good stretches further ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... young man indeed I fell in love with Constance Pleyel. I am not the first man whose life has been set awry by his love for an unworthy woman, nor shall I be the last. I would very willingly keep silent about that episode in my life, but the story has to be told. It shall be told with due reticence; for ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... and mercy of God, not only prove for his forwarding to heaven, but to augment his glory when he comes there. This man now stands on high, he lives, he is rid of slavish fears and carking cares, and in all his straits he hath a God to go to! Thus David, when all things looked awry upon him, 'encouraged himself in the Lord his God' (1 Sam 30:6). Daniel also believed in his God, and knew that all his trouble, losses, and crosses, would be abundantly made up in his God (Dan 6:23). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... discrepancies and the strangest contradictions; and the nature of this driving-power I first began to appreciate when they had lifted him into the circle of firelight and I saw his face, grey under the tan, terror in the eyes, tears too, hair and beard awry, and listened to the wild stream of words pouring ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... vexation over the way her scheme had gone awry but there was clearly nothing else to do. She retrieved her cloak, simply said good night to Christabel and the man named Black, leaving Baldy to explain ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... ever need to be alone again," he said simply. "You're forgetting. There's that darn old moose. That's a sign. You've only to send word, or come right along up. You see, the folks who're alone are the folks who've got no one to go to when things get awry. I guess you can't ever feel just alone ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... acquired suspicion being inflexible, Glossin sent for Deacon Bearcliff, to speak 'anent the villain that had shot Mr. Charles Hazlewood.' The Deacon accordingly made his appearance with his wig awry, owing to the hurry with which, at this summons of the Justice, he had exchanged it for the Kilmarnock cap in which he usually attended his customers. Mrs. Mac-Candlish then produced the parcel deposited with her by Brown, in which ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... racing to the Jenningses' house, and another little girl, not at all frightened, but enjoying the stimulus of mischief and unwontedness, was racing to the wood behind Dr. Trumbull's house, and that little girl was clad in one of Amelia Wheeler's ginghams. But the plan went all awry. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... affordeth notable Rules of Demeanour, both private and publick; and though some men, sharp-witted only in speaking evil, have depraved the Book, as the occasion that many precious hours are spent no better, they consider not that the ready way to make the minds of Youth grow awry, is to lace them too hard, by denying them just and due liberty. Surely (saith one) the Soul deprived of lawful delights, will, in way of revenge, (to enlarge its self out of prison) invade and attempt unlawful pleasures. Let such be condemned always to eat their meat with no other ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... liquor of honey or milk Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue, Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury, With their foul flavour set the lips awry; Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever Can touch the senses pleasingly are made Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so Are wont ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... King led a lady a single Coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies: very noble it was, and great pleasure to see. Then to country dances; the King leading the first, which he called for; which was, says he, "Cuckolds all awry," the old dance of England. Of the ladies that danced, the Duke of Monmouth's mistress, and my Lady Castlemaine, and a daughter of Sir Harry de Vicke's, were the best. [Sir Henry de Vic of Guernsey, Bart., had been twenty years Resident ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... it, But how oft on foreign lips it Runs awry; German, tainted, execrated, Is for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various

... their gates, and though Mechlin, Termonde and a few other places surrendered, the prince saw only too plainly that his advance into Flanders would not bring about the relief of Mons. All his plans had gone awry. Alva could not be induced to withdraw any portion of the army that was closely blockading Mons, but contented himself in following Orange with a force under his own command while avoiding a general action. And ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... arches, and above and in front of these the cheek-bones (maxillae) each send forwards and inwards a great roughened sheet of bone or crest, which forms a kind of open helmet. In the large hollow between these bony plates, and somewhat behind, are situated the nasal orifices, which are slightly awry" (Murie).[19] Professor Flower's notice of the skull ('Osteology of the Mammalia') is thus worded: "The orbit is extremely small, the temporal fossa large, and the zygomatic processes of the squamosal are greatly developed. From the outer edge of the ascending ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... for an instant, came down from the stage, and resolutely followed the ghost. The path was difficult, encumbered with stones, benches awry, and over-turned tables. And yet, through all these obstacles, an invisible channel seemed open for the spectre, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... grace, and of the remission of all sin. This, therefore, is another privilege that they are made partakers of who have Jesus Christ to be their Advocate. He is just, he is righteous, he is "Jesus Christ the righteous"; he will not be turned aside to judge awry, either of the crime or the law, for favour or affection. Nor is there any sin but what is pardonable committed by those that have chosen Jesus Christ to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of sharp elbow and brawny shoulder our good knight forced himself a way until—surrounded by men-at-arms, his limbs fast bound, his motley torn and bloody, his battered fool's-cap all awry—he beheld Duke Jocelyn haled and dragged along by fierce hands. For a moment Sir Pertinax stood dumb with horror and amaze, then, roaring, clapped hand to sword. Now, hearing this fierce and well-known ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was to render happiness to other people a personal insult. She resented Old Man Shaw's beaming delight in his daughter's return, and she "considered it her duty" to rub the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... his old parish of Thorpington Parva gave him a Ford car, and with this he scoured back areas for provisions and threaded his tin buggy in and out of columns of dusty infantry and clattering ammunition limbers, spectacles gleaming, cap slightly awry, while his batman (a wag) perched precariously a-top of a rocking pile of biscuit tins, cigarette cases and boxes of tinned fruit, and shouted after the fashion of railway porters, "By your leave! Fags for the firin' line. Way for ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various

... it; that they should have had two shots at the task, planned with knowledge and care, officially directed, and in charge of eminently competent navigators; but that nevertheless their schemes should have gone awry? They made a third attempt by means of Baudin's expedition, during the Napoleonic Consulate, and again were unsuccessful, except in a very small measure. It almost seems as if some power behind human endeavours had intended these coasts for ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... burden of his thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was gazing dreamily into the flare of the great fire, the spinning-wheel still, the end of the thread motionless in her hand. The burnished waves of her golden brown hair were pushed a bit awry, and her face was so wan and thoughtful that even her dress of crimson wool did not lessen its pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short, take heed therefore thou strike not awry.' As he spoke, he drew out a handkerchief he had brought with him, and, binding it over his eyes, he stretched himself out on the platform and laid ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... flew wide, not swiftly,—but, as fly The sea-gulls, with a steady, sober flight— And then swung back; nor close—but stood awry, Half letting in long shadows on the light, Which still in Juan's candlesticks burned high, For he had two, both tolerably bright, And in the doorway, darkening darkness, stood The sable Friar in his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... evidently been a heated discussion, for his father was walking up and down the room, his face flushed, his black eyes blazing with suppressed anger, his plum-colored coat unbuttoned as if to give him more breathing space, his silk scarf slightly awry. St. George Temple must have been the cause of his wrath, for the latter's voice was reverberating through the room as ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a palace a robe worn awry win much distinction and success, such crowds of followers and adherents did it draw. You may ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... enough to do with my history and my music; especially while my cousins are here. I began German once, but mamma thought I was growing awry, and so I left it off. I find Mrs Rowland means Matilda ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... broken here and there. The wearing elements were slowly separating the inner walls and sagging roofs. Heaps of debris lay scattered about. Over the caving well the well-sweep stuck awry, marking a place of danger. Everywhere was desolation and ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... DOMANEN-KAMMER) had fallen awry, in various points, of late; several things known to be out-at-elbows in that Country; the Kammer Raths evidently lax at their post; for which reason they have been sharply questioned, and shaken by the collar, so to speak. Nay there is one Rath, a so-called ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... worthy couple there in the old square room of a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a little, toothless dame, with angular features half hidden in a stiffly starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as precisely and perseveringly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... with a grim smile that overspreads it, leading to believe that the act of diabolical cruelty gives him gratification. Above, upon the cliff's brow, the black vultures also show signs of satisfaction. With necks craned and awry, the better to look below, they see preparations which instinct or experience has taught them to understand. Blood is about to be spilled; there will be flesh to afford ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... with the yellowish stucco that gives a mean appearance to almost every house in Paris. There are five windows in each story in the front of the house; all the blinds visible through the small square panes are drawn up awry, so that the lines are all at cross purposes. At the side of the house there are but two windows on each floor, and the lowest of all are adorned ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... His immense skull was set on such a trifle of a neck as to be scarcely worth mentioning, and was garnished by a violent mat of coarse, black hair, which also overran the territory of his cheeks and chin, leaving no neutral ground but his two fiery eyes and a broken nose all twisted awry. On a pair of short, stout legs he wore immense jack-boots, his Herculean shoulders and chest were adorned with a leathern doublet, and in the belt round his waist were conspicuously stuck a pair of pistols and a dagger. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney is overthrown, it is his jest. Tomorrow we shall find a broken shutter as his rowdy celebration of ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... men were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable, his menore awry upon his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... aware of the dancers that passed and repassed the lighted windows; among them a man in spectacles, guiding and being guided by a determined young person in apple-green, his face flushed and earnest, his grizzled hair somewhat awry. "Why—it's Jim Thorpe!" she thought, with a stab of remorse. "I'd forgotten him. But he's dancing, he's enjoying himself like a boy. Bless that thoughtful girl of mine! She's made him look ten years younger. Dear, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... really seen him? Men have been very positive and very sincere about things wherein we should have conceived mistake impossible, and yet they have been utterly mistaken. A strong predisposition, a rare coincidence, an unwonted natural phenomenon, a hundred other causes, may turn sound judgments awry, and we dare not assume forthwith that the first disciples of Christ were superior to influences which have misled many who have had better chances of withstanding them. Visions and hallucinations are not uncommon even now. How ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... this way, sir. You see me now with my back like a camel and my ribs all awry, but there was a time when Corporal Henry Wood was the smartest man in the 117th foot. We were in India then, in cantonments, at a place we'll call Bhurtee. Barclay, who died the other day, was sergeant in the same company as myself, and the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... the right to desire and take your retirement," I said to her; "in your place, I should insist upon the necessities of my health. And the Court of France will not fall nor change its physiognomy, even if a German or Iroquois Dauphine should courtesy awry, or in bad taste." ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... care-bitten, ravishing, piteous, and pitiful Humanity, who begs of me and offers me her faded love in the street corners. She shall be my Queen, the subject of my song, the motive of my poetry. She may be guilty, warped awry from her birth, and now a tired harlotry; but she shall rest on my shoulder and I shall comfort her. She is false, mistaken, degraded, ignorant, but she moves blindly from evil to good, and from lies to truth, and from ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... grade with a brake deliberately made useless was a horrible thought which she could not put from her mind. She had thought and thought until it seemed to her that she knew exactly how and why the killer's plans had gone awry. She was certain that she and Swan had prevented him from climbing down into the canyon and making sure that her dad did not live to tell what mischance had overtaken him. He had probably been watching while she and Swan ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... must be endured. Early in the morning the whole quarter had been informed of her disappearance. It was rumored that she had gone away with Frantz Risler. The illustrious Delobelle had gone forth very early, intensely agitated, with his hat awry and rumpled wristbands, a sure indication of extraordinary preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for a note from the child, for any clew, however ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Evan could not but feel sorry for him, absurd figure though he was. He looked as if his backbone had lost its pith; he sagged. His necktie was awry, and his hair hung dankly over his forehead, his mouth hung open; he looked like a ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... stood on the other side of the little table. He would not look at her face, but he could see the red dressing-gown he knew so well. She trailed through life in that red dressing-gown, with its row of dirty blue bows down the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn flounce at the bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly about, with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards from bow to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... such an uncouth apparition seen in a ball-room. Her grey petticoat exhibited her bare feet; her short upper gown, that graceful and picturesque attire of the Scottish peasantry, was thrown carelessly over her shoulders; her mutch was put on awry, and from under its immense border her face appeared, as white almost as the cap itself. She walked right into the centre of the floor, laid her heavy hand on ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... man's arm. He was never my father! He dropped the bottle and struggled hard for possession of the pistol. First he pointed it at you, then at me, then at you again. He meant to shoot you. I was afraid it would go off. With a terrible effort I twisted his wrist awry, in the mad force of passion, and wrenched the revolver away from him. He jumped at my throat, still silent, but fierce like a tiger at bay. I eluded him, and sprang back. Then I remember no more, except that I stood with the pistol pointed at him. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... the girls lost themselves in the crowd, to appear in person for their next dance, the boys none the wiser. Only John, with his donkey's head very much awry, noticed a change as he watched Howard Garth painstakingly teaching Sally the rest of the steps to the fox trot. Janet had not thought of telling Sally that she was being very nice to John; she hardly realized it herself; so Sally ignored him as girls always ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... substance of a greefe hath twenty shadows Which shewes like greefe it selfe, but is not so: For sorrowes eye, glazed with blinding teares, Diuides one thing intire, to many obiects, Like perspectiues, which rightly gaz'd vpon Shew nothing but confusion, ey'd awry, Distinguish forme: so your sweet Maiestie Looking awry vpon your Lords departure, Finde shapes of greefe, more then himselfe to waile, Which look'd on as it is, is naught but shadowes Of what it is not: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Little John. But right cunning was the shooting, for the men had spent a certain time in daily practice, and many were the shafts which sped daintily through the circle. Nathless now and again some luckless fellow would shoot awry and would be sent winding from a long arm blow from the tall lieutenant while the glade roared with laughter. And none more hearty a guffaw was given than came from the Sheriff's own throat, for the spirit of the greenwood ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... and our party was about to start out, when the door was thrown open, and three big fellows, with lead-colored complexions, their eyes shining like rats, and their hats awry, appeared on the threshold, followed by several others of a like description. One of them, with a razor-back nose, and with a heavy club bound to his wrist, stepped forward, crying: "Your passports, gentlemen!" Each one hastened to comply with the request. Unfortunately, Wilfred, ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian

... my mail shirt against me, and laid a sword in my hand, and set my helm on my head, all awry because of ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... operation was performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression—being put up by a squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same side—the new nose stands a little awry, in ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... on his work intent, Alone he practised Archery, When lo! the bow proved false and sent The arrow from its mark awry; Again he tried—and failed again; Why was it? Hark!—A wild dog's bark! An evil omen:—it was plain Some evil on his path ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... right." She smiled down at him. "He was only a bit fidgety; I believe he's frightened of the weather, Jim." She looked across at Cecil, seeing that young gentleman, wonderful to relate, with his stock folded awry, and his hair in wild confusion. "Do you ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... upon his vision there suddenly bursts a dusty figure, with hair destitute of covering, and clothing awry, a figure that has leaped from a horse bathed in sweat; a figure he imagines has broken loose from some mad-house, yet which upon addressing him shows ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... looked his best on a throne, for his upper part was his best. It was, at least, the mannish part. With scanty red hair much rubbed into disorder, a seamed red face, blotched and shining; with a square jaw awry, the neck and shoulders of a bull; with gnarled gross hands at the end of arms long out of measure, a cruel mouth and a nose like a bird's beak—his features seemed to have been hacked coarsely out of wood and as coarsely painted; but what might have passed by such means for a man was ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... dock, brown with camp-fire smoke, worn and weather beaten, his tireless hands folded behind his back, a remote, dreaming, melancholy look in his fearless eyes. His limp sombrero rested grotesquely awry upon his shaggy head, his trousers bulged awkwardly at the knees—but he was a warrior! Thin and worn and lame he was about to set forth single-handedly on a journey whose circuit would carry him far within ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,—completing an array of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands. Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a fuss—and, really, such an active, busy young lady couldn't look always as if she came trim out of a band-box. Mr. March wanted so much waiting on, he seemed to fancy he still had his big house in ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... pain as she gazed at him, and from him to the figure of her husband who had just emerged from the dining room, and was making unsteady progress toward us. Herr Nirlanger's face was flushed and his damp, dark hair was awry so that one lock straggled limply down over his forehead. As he approached he surveyed us with a surly frown that changed slowly into a leering grin. He lurched over and placed a hand familiarly on ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... door at the rear opened, admitting a fragrance of delectable food and the smallest woman Northrup had ever seen. That so fragile a creature could bear any responsibility outside that due herself, was difficult to comprehend until one looked into the strange, clear eyes peering through glasses, set awry. Unquenchable youth and power lay deep in those piercing eyes; there was force that could command the slight body ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... through the wood Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood, Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry, And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing" sky And lolled and circled, as we went by Out ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... went awry in the inflamed chambers of Elizabeth's mind—as if an electric current had been abruptly shut off. She hesitated; she had meant to say more; but there ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... general health. His breast-bone projects out, and the sides of his chest are flattened; hence he becomes what is called chicken-breasted or pigeon-breasted; his spine is usually twisted, so that he is quite awry, and, in a bad case, he is hump-backed; the ribs, from the twisted spine, on one side bulge out; he is round-shouldered; the long bones of his body, being soft, bend; he is bow-legged, knock-kneed, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... said the old man, firmly. "Russia is confused, and there is nothing steadfast in it; everything is staggering! Everybody lives awry, everybody walks on one side, there's no harmony in life. All are yelling out of tune, in different voices. And not one understands what the other is in need of! There is a mist over everything—everybody ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... straw," said Osborn irritably, walking to a window. He flung it up and heard the drab creature behind him shudder resentfully at the inrush of raw air. He put his hands in his pockets, staring out and emitting a tuneless whistle. All was awry, unprofitable and stale as the cigarette smoke of ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... country district—a fact of which I was glad, for life had been going somewhat awry with me and my heart was sore and rebellious over many things that have nothing to do with this narration. Stillwater offered time and opportunity for healing and counsel. Yet, looking back, I doubt if I should have found either had it not been for ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... from me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ain't ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... managed to remain immaculate, while their faces were smudged and streaked with soot and car dust, their hats awry and hair dishevelled. Cool, serene, with a filmy veil thrown back from her hat brim, she rocked idly, utterly unconscious of the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... ensigns of his intemperance. Yet there was a grimy humour in his forbidding aspect. The fusty black coat, which sat ill upon his shambling frame, was all besmirched with spilled snuff, and the lees of a thousand quart pots. The bands of his profession were ever awry upon a tattered shirt. His ancient wig scattered dust and powder as he went, while a single buckle of some tawdry metal gave a look of oddity to his clumsy, slipshod feet. A caricature of a man, he ambled and chuckled and seized the easy pleasures within his reach. There was never a summer's ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... the cobwebs on the ceiling, a bloated spider crawling in one: a worse monster is gloating over me: those dull eyes of his, and my own pistol-barrel, cover me in the lamp-light. The crucifix pin is awry in his cravat; that is because he has offered it me to kiss. As a refinement (I feel sure) my revolver is not cocked; and the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews? This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the association, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey too by his bloody beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten. But all is not gold that glitters. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... powder, perfectly in his element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; Kathleen, tres grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the period as he knew how; his sister Naida, sweet and gracious; Scott, masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient glances toward the dusky solitudes that ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... too discerning to be fobbed off with pretences. One of these pretty fellows fails by his laborious exactness; the other, by his as much studied negligence. Frank Careless, as soon as his valet has helped on and adjusted his clothes, goes to his glass, sets his wig awry, tumbles his cravat; and in short, undresses himself to go into company. Will Nice is so little satisfied with his dress, that all the time he is at a visit, he is still mending it, and is for that reason the more insufferable; for he ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... are very liable to become awry at many boarding schools. This is occasioned principally by their being obliged too long to preserve an erect attitude, by sitting on forms many hours together. To prevent this the school-seats should have either ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... bundle on his back, and went forth. When he came to the hollow tree, he sat down and hung his head. The bees came flying out, and the Queen-bee asked him if he had a stiff neck, since he held his head so awry? "Alas, no," answered the tailor, "something quite different weighs me down," and he told her what the King had demanded of him. The bees began to buzz and hum amongst themselves, and the Queen-bee ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... haul. And first and foremost there was a magnificent turbot—a huge round fellow, with his white waistcoat, and mouth awry, apparently, though it was normally placed, and the creature's eyes, like those of the rest of the flat-fish, were screwed round to one ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... The giver of this shattered limb! Albeit young, (a hundred years, When next the forest leaved appears,) Will Duskywing behold this breast Shot-riddled, or divide my nest With wearer of so tattered vest? I see myself, with wing awry, Approaching. Duskywing will spy My altered mien, and shun my eye. With laughter bursting, through the wood The birds will scream—she's quite too good For thee. And yonder meddling jay, I hear him chatter all the day, "He's crippled—send ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... say those chaffy things in a voice like Jane's, and just as Jane would have said them—oh, my wig!—Do you know, that is the duchess's only original little swear. All the rest are quotations. And when she says: 'My wig!' we all try not to look at it. It is usually slightly awry. The toucan tweaks it. He is so very LOVING, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... definite wish. He would go anywhere, do anything in reason, so long as no mental effort was required of him; but music—to Paul's utter mystification—he decisively refused to hear. For the time being the man's whole nature seemed awry, and there were moments when Paul's heart contracted with ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... forth the one possession about which she had been utterly silent—a little hand-glass which Mark had brought her one winter evening just before he was hurt. A cheap, little, ugly glass, which you would have turned from in disgust, saying that it made your nose awry, and your chin protrude and your eyes squint, and was altogether horrid; but, held before Mart's glowing face, what a secret did it reveal! Mart looked, and was silent, too; and went home in a hushed frame ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... consisted, however, in combining exactness with awkwardness; he displayed all the naive minuteness of the primitive painters; in fact, his mind, barely raised from the clods, delighted in petty details. The stove, with its perspective all awry, was tame and precise, and in colour as dingy ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Sarriette, "nothing." She paid her money, still laughing and showing her teeth, and staring the men in the face. Her grey skirt was all awry, and her loosely fastened red neckerchief allowed a little of her white bosom to appear. Before she went away she stepped up to Gavard again, and pretending to threaten him exclaimed: "So you won't tell me what you were talking about as I came in? I could see you laughing from the street. Oh, you ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... wall. Life, it seemed to him, was a great search for—he knew not what; and in the process of the ages one by one the true marks upon the ways had been shattered, or buried, or the meaning of the words had been slowly forgotten; one by one the signs had been turned awry, the true entrances had been thickly overgrown, the very way itself had been diverted from the heights to the depths, till at last the race of pilgrims had become hereditary stone-breakers and ditch-scourers on a track that led to destruction—if it led anywhere ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... that's wholly obsolete and laid upon the shelf): Don't waste your time in aiming at exactitude syntactical, Or hold that he who teaches Greek should know that Greek himself: For if you wish to face the truth, and fact no more to see awry— Who strives to wake the dormant mind of unreceptive imps Need only read the works of Rein on Education's Theory And study the immortal tomes of Ziegler and ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... brief sojourn in the business world still remained—an elaborate easy-chair with rose pillows, a thermos bottle and cut-glass tumbler, a curlicue French mirror slightly awry and, on her desk, a gay-bordered silk handkerchief, a silver-mesh bag, and a great amount of cluttered notations; all of which proved that the understudy secretary had not yet mastered ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... back, with his great, gray eyes staring about him. While the feelings of his friend had moved towards satisfaction, his had undergone a less pleasant change. His plan seemed to be going awry, and he began to think of himself as of a fool. What had he anticipated? What had he expected of this expedition? He had been, as usual, politely waiting on destiny. He had come to the islet in the hope that Destiny would meet him there and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... compound interest! Such things should be avoided as the very pestilence! For men's hearts ought not to be set against one another; but set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only. Men's souls ought to be left to see clearly; not jaundiced, blinded, twisted all awry, by revenge, mutual abhorrence, and the like. An Insurrection that can announce the disease, and then retire with no such balance-account opened anywhere, has attained the highest success possible ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... before another storm broke over head, and this time from a quarter from which she would least have expected it. Marfa Timofyevna came into her room, and at once slammed the door after her. The old lady's face was pale, her cap was awry, her eyes were flashing, and her hands and lips were trembling. Lisa was astonished; she had never before seen her sensible and reasonable aunt ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... dusty hallway by a maid so redolent of stale perspiration that it was noticeable even in the hall's strong saturation of smells of cheap cookery. The parlor furniture was rapidly going to pieces; the chromos and prints hung crazily awry; dust lay thick upon the center table, upon the chimney-piece, upon the picture frames, upon the carving in the rickety old chairs. Only by standing did Susan avoid service as a dust rag. It was typical of the profound discouragement that blights or blasts all but a small area of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the use of our staying up longer?" Max finally announced in an authoritative fashion, after Steve had almost jerked his neck awry for about the seventh time, with one of those spasmodic movements. "Our blankets are calling to us, boys; ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... sang with them, her fresh young voice rising above the rest. Yellow winter sunlight came through the stained-glass windows and shone on her lovely flushed face, her smooth kerchief, her cap, always just a little awry. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... confined, crooked streets, amidst several poor-looking houses, stood a narrow high tenement, run up of framework that was much misshapen, with corners and ends awry. It was inhabited by poor people, the poorest of whom looked out from the garret, where, outside the little window, hung in the sunshine an old, dented bird-cage, which had not even a common cage-glass, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... circumstances and circumstances adapt themselves to us. Now for my letter to the Queen. [He sits down, takes a partly written letter from his portfolio and reads it.] "Exalted Lady: Your wish to see the Prince of Wales is a command for your devoted servant. Unless all plans should go awry I will have the honor to lead the Prince of Wales this very night into the presence of his Royal Aunt. He hopes not only for the happiness of pressing a kiss on Your Majesty's hand, but desires, with all the longing of an ardent heart, finally to look upon his dear affianced, the Princess Wilhelmine. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... a fine mind has been lost to mankind by the want of some propitious accident, to lead it to a proper channel; to prevent its current from "turning awry and losing the name of action!" We know not whether the story of Newton's apple be true, but it may serve for an illustration, and if that apple had not fallen, where would have been his Principia? If the Lady Egerton had not missed her way in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... the tableau, he solemnly drove on, saying he would not want any one gawking at him if he were the happy man. Anyway, he couldn't urge Chub fast enough to prevent my seeing and hearing what I've told you. Besides that, I saw that Elizabeth's hat was on awry, her hair in disorder, and her eyes red. It was disappointing after she had been so ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... did arrive my mother-in-law's feathers were somewhat awry. We mounted the stately staircase, lined on both sides by the superb Cent Gardes, standing like ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... been absent from the room to hold private consultations with Miss Emily concerning the biscuits and sponge-cake for tea, and who now sat down to the quilt and began to unroll a capacious and very limp calico thread-case; and placing her spectacles awry on her little pug nose, she began a series of ingenious dodges with her thread, designed to hit the eye ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... there were the abilities to summarize rapidly whatever he had been told, and to remember most of everything he saw. His power of observation was so developed that sometimes the actual picture of some detail—such as a dirty rifle, a man without equipment, or a few sand bags laid awry—lent him a false impression of the whole. Yet his memory and rapid power of observation made him a real tactician—I use the adjective advisedly. No man who knew less, and there were few who knew more, of the front line than he did, could afford to argue with ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... just human beings like ourselves, but how do they get things so awry? They put such a slight upon parenthood, with their ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... wainscot behind it; 'you lying scullion!' roared the doctor, instantaneously repeating the blow, and down went Davy, and down went the table with dreadful din, and the incensed doctor bestrode his prostrate foe with clenched fists and flaming face, and his grand wig all awry, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... pass and turned to look upon with grins; two or three urchins danced about the woman, pointing at her and calling at her. Her dress was disordered, muddy all up one side as if she had fallen; her face flushed; her hat awry; her hair escaped and wisped about her eyes and on her shoulders. She was drunk. An obscene and horrible spectacle, the mock of her beholders. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... flashing eyes, harsh voice, and violent gestures.] The sufferers, the toilers; that great crowd of old and young—old and young stamped by excessive labour and privation all of one pattern—whose backs bend under burdens, whose bones ache and grow awry, whose skins, in youth and in age, are wrinkled and yellow; those from whom a fair share of the earth's space and of the light of day is withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... by certain rising youth, who timed his habits and awaited his disrobing with o'erripe tomatoes. The bombardment, and the inability to pursue the enemy, turned the genial current of the Baba's life awry until I put a bathroom in my house, with a lock ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... her money we will change our plans, and abandon the adventure we were forced to undertake. But if, for any reason, that plan goes awry, we can fall back upon this prettily conceived scheme which we have undertaken. As you say, it is well to have two strings to one's bow; and during July and August everyone will be out of town, and so we ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... Beaux-Arts, who had hurried to the spot, with his uniform all awry, and bald to the middle of his back, explained to Mohammed the apologue of "The Dog and the Fox," as told in the catalogue, with this moral: "Suppose that they meet," and the note: "The property of the Duc de Mora," the bulky Hemerlingue, puffing and ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... torpor and listless ennui in which he was sunk, the disorder of his library, whose arrangement had never been completed, irritated him. Helpless in his armchair, he had constantly in sight the books set awry on the shelves propped against each other or lying flat on their sides, like a tumbled pack of cards. This disorder offended him the more when he contrasted it with the perfect order of his religious works, carefully placed on ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans



Words linked to "Awry" :   crooked, nonfunctional, malfunctioning



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