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Ribald   /rˈaɪbɑld/   Listen
Ribald

noun
1.
A ribald person; someone who uses vulgar and offensive language.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ribald" Quotes from Famous Books



... slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast! A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he, Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter, that is come of lineage high! And by the throat he Allan grasp'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... it was about the only instance we witnessed of a public man being independent enough to denounce the fanaticism of secession. A more amusing scene than that presented by the attitudes-the questions in regard to South Carolina licking the Federal Government-the strange pomp-ribald gasconade, and high-sounding chivalry of the worthies, cannot be imagined. They were in a perfect ecstasy with themselves and South Carolina, and swore, let whatever come, they were ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... call "Glacidas"—commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But, though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Jeanne's presence in Orleans was proved four days after her ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the worse of the treaty of Peronne with Charles the Bold, and he had a mistress named Perrette, so that the Parisians trained their parrots, magpies, and other speaking birds to ask Perrette to give them a drink, among other ribald phrases. Consequently, the king issued a royal commission "to a young man of Paris named Henry Perdriel, in the said city of Paris" to take and seize "all magpies, jays, and chevrettes being in cages or otherwise, and being private property, in order to bring them all before ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... that ribald screaming. David (David is Angel's proper name) get up instantly from that piano stool and face me! John, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... The ribald demons that infested the back of Ann Veronica's mind urged various facetious interrogations upon her, as, for example, where the witness had acquired his prose style. She controlled herself, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... vain for the ribald songs, the biting jests, the terrible threats and vows of vengeance; in their stead I heard praises of the Queen-Mother; openly expressed admiration of the youthful monarch, who has, since then, advanced his country to the highest pinnacle of fame; and words of good-will towards ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... placed me servant to a lord, For she had borne me to a ribald knave, Destroyer of himself and ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... yelled, cymbals clanged, drums rattled and droned, without either time or tune. Drunken pastophori had flung open the rooms where the vestments and sacred vessels were kept, and from these treasuries the ribald mob had dragged forth panther-skins such as the priests wore when performing the sacred functions, brass cars for carrying sacrifices, wooden biers on which the images of the gods were borne in solemn processions, and other precious objects. In ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... wished that she had come afoot, despite the knowledge that she would have suffered many inconveniences, accidental and intentional jostling, insolence and ribald jest. The Cantonese, excepting in the shops where he expects profit, always resents the intrusion of the fan-quei—foreign devil. The chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... I wearied of that. I could not walk on stilts always, and I descended to the earth and read Voltaire, and laughed and sneered at all the old forms and superstitions of man. But this does not afford me any enjoyment now—the unhappy do not feel like laughing at a ribald wit; but, alas! this rubbish is stored here, and here I must live with it. It blackened and blurred the pictures of the angels, that adorned my childish memories. It wiped out all heavenly visions, and left only the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... other man had a cigar or pipe in his mouth, and jugs of whiskey were handed round freely. The fumes of the whiskey and the dense tobacco smoke were sickening to my senses, and my mind was equally nauseated by the coarse jokes and ribald songs around me. It was a very disagreeable ride. Since that time there has been ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... throughout the ages, fell in and is the only one of the tombs of the kings that cannot be shown. The mummy of this ablest and proudest of the Pharaohs is now on exhibition at the Cairo Museum with a score of others and excites the ribald comment of the Cook's tourist, who drops his "h's" and knows nothing of Egyptology. Yet the mummy of Rameses is by far the most interesting of those shown at the museum because the head and face are so essentially modern. The other rulers of Egypt were plainly ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... childhood from authoritative persons about the merciful goodness of God. His childhood had been rather ceremoniously religious, for his step-uncle, the Lieutenant-General, was a great defender of Christianity as well as of the British Empire. The Lieutenant-General had even written a pamphlet against a ribald iconoclastic book published by the Rationalist Press Association, in which pamphlet he had made a sorry mess of Herbert Spencer. All the Lieutenant-General's relatives and near admirers went to church, and they all went to precisely the same kind of ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... Oriental dancer's, the Widow Weatherwax had assumed the centre of the ring. The sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... they could hardly stand. Yet, somehow, they managed, with assistance, to clamber up our low side and reach the deck; when, as well as their drunken state would allow, they forthwith proceeded, in ribald language, to entertain their more sober shipmates with a tale of gross, wanton, cruel outrage, perpetrated on board the Spaniard, that made my blood boil with indignation, and caused me, thick-skinned ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... —from ribald lips and throats turned brazen with laughter, from singers who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus swells to the accompaniment ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... wonderfully picturesque squalid mud towns of Senoures and two or three others, honey-yellow in a green mist of palms, against an indigo sky with streaks of sunshine like bright bayonets of Djinns. And then Medinet, through which our caravan had to pass en route to camp, much to the ribald joy of smart, silk-robed Egyptian "undergrads" who strolled hand in hand along the broad streets near the University. They were big, fantastic houses to suit modern Oriental taste, painted pink and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Mayor, "d'ye think I brook Being worse treated than a Cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there till ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... was taken up by other throats. "Countess Courteau! Countess Courteau!" they mocked. "Come, Countess! Nice Countess! Pretty Countess!" There was a ribald note to this mockery which caused ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... house, and this is the first time I've ever had an extra rum ration. And that with my own flesh and blood, to say nothing of a lawful wife, running round the Bumbles from morning till night. I admit that on two several occasions your predecessor produced to me my master's liquor, but his ribald reception of my inquiry whether such production was authorized left me no alternative but to refuse ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... strange coincidence the name that appears the following instant is that of Henry Hide, the head of the leather Trust. The ribald jest of the boy proves to be all ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... that I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald laughter—laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar. But after a few seconds' serious reflection I dismissed the matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez who had striven thus ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... laugh a little ribald, its talk a shade high-pitched, drifted towards the street, or was wafted up in elevators. The throng thinned to an occasional group. Then these became rarer and rarer. The revolving door admitted one man, or two, perhaps, who lingered not at all in the unaccustomed ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... never held a stranger audience in thraldom. If the song had been without words the result would have been the same, almost, for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... not in the most amiable condition of mind, and a hint of the ribald would have instantly transformed a passive anger into a blind fury. Thus, a scene hung precariously; but its potentialities became as nothing on the appearance of ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... cliff where the morning sun, searching and fervid, did not reach, and threw themselves to the ground, resting their backs against the foot wall, and trying patiently to await the appearance of their guides. The steady, hurried clink of glass and bottle on bar, the ribald shouts and threats of the crowd that filled the road house, the occasional burst of a maudlin song, all told the condition of the ejected placer men who had stopped here ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... would reach the souls of these river people who sang ribald songs, danced to lively music, and lived clear of all laws except the one they called "The Law," a deadly, large-calibre revolver or ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... was roughly whisked away in the twinkling of an eye. But the prisoner did not move or raise a hand in protest, even when he was bared to his under-clothing in front of fraeulein, who signalled her appreciation of the sight by wildly clapping her hands, laughing merrily, and giving expression to ribald jokes. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... to be near his friend; of being laughed to scorn by them all of being chased by US troops at the very commencement of his enterprise; of being severely wounded, rescued, and carried off during the flight by Buck Tom, and then—a long blank, mingled with awful dreams and scenes, and ribald songs, and curses—some of all which was real, and some the working of a ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the table-round again But that a ribald King and Court Bade him toil on to make them sport, Demanding for their niggard pay, Fit for ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... old proverb teaches that wearers of the long robe never reach paradise per saltum, but 'by slow degrees;' and an irreverent ballad supports the vulgar belief that the only attorney to be found on the celestial rolls gained admittance to the blissful abode more by artifice than desert. The ribald broadside runs ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... every vice they assumed a degage, or air of superiority, and fleeced their verdant companions of the very clothes they wore; while they made the impure air of the camps more foul with ribald ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers were terrible. From the noble's broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels, and displayed an eloquence ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... stared and murmured, for by those words, wittingly or unwittingly, their general had confessed his faith, and that day they made ribald songs about him in the camp. But on the morrow when they learned how that the man whom the prince spared had been seized by a lion and taken away as he sat at night with his companions in the bivouac, his mouth full of boasting of his own courage in offering insult to the prince and the new ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... condescended to take office. With a rent-roll loosely estimated at about L170,000 a year, it is beneath a man to take from the public a paltry five or six thousand a year, and undergo all the undignified abuse of popular assemblies, and "a ribald press." But it was a matter of course that the House of Vipont should be represented in any Cabinet that a constitutional monarch could be advised to form. Since the time of Walpole, a Vipont was always in the service of his country, except in those rare instances when the country ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a Belgian priest who had begged his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald and hypocritical youth. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... him to review? Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... effect of rousing his supporters to greater enthusiasm and greater zeal. When his fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies? They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... a great burst of ribald laughter at this, and numerous were the witticisms perpetrated at the expense of the missionary, but he took no notice of these for a time, occupying himself merely in turning over the leaves of his Bible. When there ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... Then another stooped (my heart stopped beating), and picked up a letter lying on the ground—a letter that had dropped out of M. de Poissy's pocket—a letter from his wife, full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud, with coarse ribald comments on every sentence, each trying to outdo the previous speaker. When they came to some pretty words about a sweet Maurice, their little child away with its mother on some visit, they laughed at M. de la Tourelle, and told him that he would be hearing such woman's drivelling some ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... beauty, of her kisses and caresses, and the delightful coolness of her thin and supple hands. His mad infatuation for her made him oblivious to the taunts and jeers of the villagers, who seldom saw him without making ribald allusion to ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... those days was not what it is in these advanced times. Then, it meant that one was possessed of all the evil habits that fall to the lot of man. David Cable was more or less contaminated by contact with his rough, ribald companions of the rail, and he glided moderately into the bad habits of his kind. He drank and "gamboled" with the rest of the boys; but by nature not being vicious and low, the influences were not hopelessly ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... in the Peninsula. In a few weeks he found himself the acknowledged head and front of a little coterie which assembled nightly at the George Inn, on King street. This, however, did not last long, as the late potations and ribald carousings of the company disturbed the entire neighborhood, and attracted attention to the place. The landlord received a stern admonition to keep earlier hours and less uproarious guests. When Boniface ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... known the pittance of the hospital, And, more degrading still, the patronage Of the Colonna. Of the tallest trees The roots delve deepest. Yes, I've trod thy halls, Scorned and derided midst their ribald crew, A licensed jester, save the cap and bells, I have borne this—and I have borne the death, The unavenged death, of a dear brother. I seemed, I was, a base, ignoble slave. What am I?—Peace, I say!—What am I now? Head of this great republic, chief of Rome— In all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... watermen at the cabstand knew him and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to bed not knowing how ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Don Rodrigue, with a band of ribald followers, succeeds in carrying her off with all the other nuns. They are all driven by the King's soldiers into the cemetery of the Aliscamps. Nerto wanders away during the battle and is lost among the tombs. At dawn the next ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... the maid's couch, and bade her good-night, called to them to be quiet. For a time the noise ceased, but a little later, as he was spreading his blanket on the ground, it began again, and one of the transport men sang the opening strain of a ribald song. Menard strode over to the group so quickly that he took them by surprise. Colin was slipping something behind him, but he could not escape Menard's eye. In a moment he was sprawling on his face, and a brandy flask was brought to light. Menard dashed it against ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... in a camp. Verily I saw well that this was not the army of men clean confessed and of holy life who had followed the Maid from Blois to Orleans. In place of priests, here were harlots, and, for hymns, ribald songs, for men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, Bretons, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, all talking in their own speech, rude, foul, and disorderly. So we took our way, as best we knight, through the press, hearing oaths enough ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... dressing-tent and told to stay there until further orders. He changed his clothes and "washed up," listening meanwhile to the congratulations and the good-natured chaffing of the performers who were there with him. Despite their ribald scoffing, he knew they were his friends: there was something about these careless, inconsequent knights of the sawdust ring, in spangles or out, that warmed the cockles of his ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... service. What he lacked in attire he made up in the grooming. Billy shone. Billy was plastered. Billy smelled to high heaven of soap and kerosene. But there was that about Billy which checked Maggie's ribald jeers, and the mother's question as to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... character of a prisoner, was the signal for a great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were the suggestions thrown out by some of those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged over me for a second or two; for I saw at once that, unlike my captors, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the face of the maid, which was explained a minute later when, in accordance with her mistress's order, the visitor was shown into the drawing-room, for his presence was of an elegance so extraordinary as to attract attention anywhere—and mirth as well from ribald observers. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... sneers at and ribald jokes about the American Navy. They laughed in derision at our declaration of war. They spoke of the Constitution frigate, which had performed such gallant deeds in the Mediterranean, as "a bundle of pine boards sailing under a bit of striped bunting," and they declared that ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... a thick volume of the statutes, that the laws of the state of Kansas, which he had sworn to enforce, prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquors; prohibited gambling and games of chance; interdicted the operation of immoral resorts—put a lock and key in his hand, in short, that would shut up the ribald pleasures of Ascalon like a tomb. As for the ordinances of the city, which he also had obligated himself to apply, Morgan had not found time to work down to them. There appeared to be authority in the thick ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... There are other mosaics in the Torcello cathedral, especially those in the apsis and in one of the side chapels, which are in a beautiful spirit of art, and form the widest possible contrast to the eighteenth-century high altar, with its insane and ribald angels flying off at the sides, and poising themselves in the rope-dancing attitudes favored by statues of heavenly persons in the decline of the Renaissance. The choir is peculiarly built, in the form of a half-circle, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... tyranny become, that he extorts blackmail from monarchs, makes princes tremble, and receives smooth answers to his insults from Buonarroti. These three men, Machiavelli, Cellini, and Aretino, each in his own line, and with the proper differences that pertain to philosophic genius, artistic skill, and ribald ruffianism, sufficiently indicate the dissolution of the social bond in Italy. They mark their age as the age of adventurers, bandits, bullies, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... view from the windows, of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and of light and sunshine—on ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... movements, guessed her mind, and followed her to have some sport, not knowing who she was. She ran quickly down the pathway to hide behind the foliage, and, not daring to follow, they let her go. She heard the shouting of the ribald crew as they passed down ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... are either random discharges of superlatives or vigorous assertions of sound moral principles. He compliments some favourite author with an emphatic repetition of the ordinary eulogies, or shows conclusively that Montgomery was a sham poet, and Wycherley a corrupt ribald. Nobody can hit a haystack with more certainty, but he is not so good at a difficult mark. He never makes a fine suggestion as to the secrets of the art whose products he admires or describes. His mode, for example, of criticising Bunyan ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... unbreakable. They thanked him kindly for his efforts in their behalf, those fat, fresh men,—thanked him kindly, with broad grins and ribald laughter; and now, when he understood, he made no answer. Nor did he cherish silent bitterness. It was immaterial. The idea—the fact behind the idea—was not changed. Here he was and his thousand dozen; there was Dawson; the problem ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... mixture of negroes and Yankees riding his own fine horses, came Colonel M——, his head erect, his eyes blazing scornfully, glancing from side to side, or drawing a sharp, hard breath between his clinched teeth as he overheard some ribald jest. His house and gin-house had been burned, his fields laid waste; he had left his young daughters without protection and without shelter. What the ladies felt as they saw this sad cavalcade pass out of sight may not be told. Morning dawned upon a scene of desolation, sickening ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... American Anti-Slavery Society, denies that the society asks for the enfranchisement of colored men, and the Liberator apologizes for excluding the colored men of Louisiana from the ballot-box, they injure us more vitally than all the ribald jests of the whole pro-slavery press." Finally the convention insisted that any such things as the right to own real estate, to testify in courts of law, and to sue and be sued, were mere privileges so long as general political liberty was ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... cockney, he had slept under London bridges, opened cab doors for half-pence, carried links on foggy nights. By the clear force of genius he had made his way up from that;—from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was accorded a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... rattled on shuffling heels, and a scabbard clanged on a chair. I seemed to feel and know it all in some far-off way, but I was not touched by the spirit of it, was not a part of it. I watched the reddened cheeks and loose scorching mouths around me with a sort of distant curiosity, and the ribald jests flung right and left struck me not at all acutely. It was as if I were reading a Book of Bacchus. I drank on evenly, not doggedly, and answered jest for jest without a hot breath of drunkenness. I looked several ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "Stop your ribald talk," said Alan in a stern voice. "It would be better if instead of making jokes you gave thanks to Providence for bringing both of us alive and well out of very dreadful dangers. Now I am going to dress for dinner," and with an anxious glance ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... was kept busy nodding to friends—many of whom had become such during the later days of the drought. Merchants grinned at him from their doorways; Dunlavey's friends sneered as he passed or sent ribald jokes after him. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... selected in Massachusetts Bay, then called Wessagusset, now the town of Weymouth, which they had selected for their residence. They left their sick behind them, to be nursed by those Christian Pilgrims whose piety had excited their ribald abuse. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... at the screens and the altars, "all the carved work thereof they break down with hatchet and hammer," they tore the hangings from the shrines, they found the sacred cups, and filling them with sacramental wine, drank with gusts of ribald laughter. In the centre of the choir they built a bonfire, and fed it with pictures, carvings, and oaken benches, so that it blazed and roared furiously. On to it—for this mob did not come to steal ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... God knew the abysmal depths of its reality. Months piled on months there had been of it! Those voices out there that rose in a jangle of ribald mirth were the same voices that, hushed in deadlier menace, had whispered that grim slogan, "Death to the Gray Seal!" through every hidden cranny in the underworld; these men and women here around ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... hardly reassuring, as the single street was still the scene of pandemonium, the saloon and dance-hall almost directly opposite, operating in full blast. Oaths and ribald laughter assailed her ears, while directly beneath, although out of her view, a quarrel threatened to lead to serious consequences. She pulled down the window to shut out these sounds, but the room became so stuffy and hot without even this slight ventilation, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... Englishmen in particular—to discover a literature, and the finest in the world, which habitually philosophised life: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking Why? 'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers—call them the gods, or ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Kakunai almost melted into the icy puddle on the ground. He shivered as he wiped the cold sweat dripping from his forehead. At first voices said—"Who is speaking in these ribald terms? Kakunai San is it not? Who the companion?... Oya! 'Tis the horse which talks! Asakusa and Yoshiwara? What say the women to the presence of the beast? Eh! Off with you, Kakunai San, to show which is horse and which groom." They crowded around the pair, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... leant far out into the darkness as though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before became now the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a comic song which one of their number ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... under foot. At the very outset of Cromwell's changes four Suffolk youths broke into a church at Dovercourt, tore down a wonder-working crucifix, and burned it in the fields. The suppression of the lesser monasteries was the signal for a new outburst of ribald insult to the old religion. The roughness, insolence, and extortion of the Commissioners sent to effect it drove the whole monastic body to despair. Their servants rode along the road with copes for doublets or tunicles for saddle-cloths, and scattered panic among the larger ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... wanted. The five minutes before this line was reported to be through seemed an hour, and when the telephonist had laboriously to repeat the orders, each one of us itched to seize the telephone and shout ribald abuse at the man ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... romantic—a young girl giving up all for God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name—a nun! She would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister Rose!' She developed ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... of the freight station. Dusk settles down over the valley. An engine near by begins to throb and electric lights spring up here and there. All over the town the flames of the great bonfires leap out of the gloom. From the camps of the workmen come ribald songs and jests, The presence of death has no effect ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... than mountebanks, Callias the town-slave and the like of him, antic-jesters, [Footnote: [Greek: Mimous geloion], players of drolls, mimes, or farces. Our ancient word droll signifies, like [Greek: mimos], both the actor and the thing acted.] and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their companions, such persons Philip caresses and keeps about him. Small matters these may be thought, Athenians, but to the wise they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness. Success perhaps throws a shade over them now; prosperity ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... great laugh, but I managed to kick him beneath the table and he turned it into a sneeze. This was fortunate, as such ribald merriment would have hurt the old man's feelings terribly. After all, also, as Leo himself had once said, surely we were not the people to mock at the theory of re-incarnation, which, by the way, is the first article of faith among nearly one quarter ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... (there I think his fine motive was apparent) took care to bring their ribald remarks under Burton's notice. Furny's idea evidently was to point out to Burton that his position was untenable, that it was not fitting that the same man should deal with Mr. Wrackham and with Ford Lankester. He ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... terms with the present rulers of France. Could any statesman not gifted with second sight have spoken otherwise? At that time the Reign of Terror was approaching its climax. The Goddess of Reason had lately been enthroned in Notre Dame amidst ribald songs and dances. The schism between Robespierre and the atheistical party was beginning to appear; and few persons believed that France would long bend the knee before the lords of the guillotine, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... War a changed nation. The people who in 1870 made ribald verses and sang cynical songs over the plight of their country are now no more, and France emerges serious, resolute, to the great work which she has before her — of building the great first Democratic ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter

... "Thou slanderous ribald!" quoth the Miller, "hast? A traitor false, false lying clerk!" quoth he, "Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity, Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter that is come of lineage high!" And by the throat he Allen grasped ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... nice "in a Canadian Canoe" To practise what the ribald call "canoodling;" But what the deuce does the Dominion do, "In this galley," with this new game of "boodling?" "Paddle your own Canoe," dear, if you will, But kick all "cross coves" out, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various

... Her. Thy ribald questions were best unanswered. Yet thus much thou shalt know.—All that was Amphitryon in Heracles, is dead; I am that mortal part. The Zeus in him lives, and is with the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... country, a hungry penniless army had been thrown upon the citizens of Plymouth. An enormous debt had been created in equipping it, and the soldiers' allowances were hopelessly inadequate to provide them with a proper supply of food or clothes. 'A more ragged, ribald, and rebellious herde never gathered on the eve of an important expedition. Mutiny was common in the town, and the ringleaders were tried at Drum-head, and shot in the nearest open space.... Incensed at the disregard of their ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... shout of ribald joy. Not even a saint could have helped it, I'm sure; for Maida is pretty near to a saint, and she was as ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... of that charity which bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, which rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; and make us thrust aside henceforth, in dignified disgust, the cynic and the slanderer, the ribald and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... also the somewhat ribald mirth which has clung for centuries about Saint Peter as gatekeeper of Heaven. We can trace this mirth back to the rude jests of the earliest miracle plays. We see these jests repeated over and over again in the folklore of Latin and Germanic ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... province. The burgomaster smoked his pipe in peace; the substantial solace of his domestic cares, after her daily toils were done, sat soberly at the door, with her arms crossed over her apron of snowy white without being insulted by ribald street walkers or vagabond boys—those unlucky urchins who do so infest our streets, displaying under the roses of youth the thorns and briars of iniquity. Then it was that the lover with ten breeches, and the damsel with petticoats of half a score, indulged ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... bethought me of that ass in AEsop's Fables, who was ass enough to think of fondling his master in the same manner as his favourite lap-dog, and was well basted for his pains. I understood that fable to signify, that what is graceful and comely in some is not so in others. Let the ribald flout and jeer, the mountebank tumble,—let the common fellow, who has made it his business, imitate the song of birds and the gestures of animals, but not the man of quality, who can deserve no credit or renown from any skill in ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... village know me over there. This was a new departure, you see. What the critics in those parts expect from me is something entitled 'Wow! Wow!' or 'The Girl from Yonkers'. It would have unsettled their minds to find me breaking out in poetic drama. They are men of coarse fibre and ribald mind and they would have been very funny about it. I thought it wiser to come over here among strangers, little thinking that I should sit in the next seat to somebody I had known ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... sure what I am an example of—or to," he said, on one occasion, in his light, rather cold and detached way, "which is why I at times regard myself in that capacity with a slightly ribald lightness." ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... these youths, Romeo reeled off more ribald remarks, things that created a sudden chill among the passengers on the Fall of Rome. Mrs. Tinneray, looked upon as a leader, called up a shocked face and walked away; Mrs. Mealer after a faint "Excuse me," also ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... America, and when within twenty miles of this wonderful place we encountered a throng of that class of human pests known as "hotel runners," thick as bees, and more stingingly annoying, for they especially abounded in low jests and ribald stories which grate so harshly upon sensitive ears. It would certainly be an act of philanthropy, both to the hotels and their patrons, to take some measure for the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and broke off. There was no need to ask ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... say I," returned Ebbo; "didst not see, Friedel, how he kept his eyes on her in church? My uncle says the Bohemians are mere deceivers. Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks when she made her ribald prediction." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion flashed ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... career a halo of political martyrdom which there is nothing in the original to suggest. This metamorphosis of Guise is all the more remarkable, because Monsieur, his former co-partner in villany, reappears, in the one scene where he figures, in the same ribald, blustering vein as before, and his death is reported, at the close of Act IV, as a fulfilment ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... ape turned his ribald wit upon me; but now a head appeared above the parapet, a hand seized Pompon and drew him back, and Le Brusquet's voice hailed me, bidding me come up to him. This I did with the aid of a friendly tree, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... another. Mrs Stumfold had interpreted the gentleman's meaning wrongly, and had ever since gnashed with her teeth and fired great guns with her eyes whenever Mr Paul was named within her hearing. "Ribald ruffian," she had once said of him; "but that he thinks his priestly rags protect him, he would not have dared to insult me." It was said that she had complained to Stumfold; but Mr Stumfold's sacerdotal clothing, whether ragged or whole, prevented him also from interfering, and nothing ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods—or the ditch. As, for instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than they set up that ribald old camp-song, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... specks of blackness—solitary old men and women that stumbled on faster than they had done for years in their anxiety lest no place should be left for them; family groups already discussing all they had heard of the preacher; knots of youths, half-ribald and half-curious, encouraging each other as over their reluctant spirits there blew the first breath of that dread which was to send them, shaking, to the penitents' bench. Little children, sagging sideways from the hand of a grown-up relation, dragged their feet along that road, taken ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... fortunate, and probably—I may say certainly—more meritorious countrymen. I do not indeed go so far as to say that this woman is in collusion with those ferocious ruffians who have made these sacred precincts of justice ring with their ribald and threatening scoff's. But the persistence of these riotous interruptions, and the ease with which their perpetrators have evaded arrest, have produced a strange impression in my mind. (Very impressively.) However, gentlemen, that impression ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... sure of it, my lad. But look here, Murray; the people are quite friendly towards us, so help me in making our lads behave themselves. I mean, there must be no ribald laughing at the poor wretches. That is not the way to appeal to their better feelings. Look at that! Poor benighted creatures. These slave-owners must keep them in a darkness as ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... for the Franciscans. They, honest men, understood nothing save that the Tartar king had not the love of holy things for which they had hoped. They explained the offices of the Church as well as they could to ribald and uncomprehending auditors, and continued placidly in their devotions. As it chanced, a convoy was about to start for Muscovy, whence by ship they might come to Constantinople. The Tartars made no objection to their journey, for they ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... with open mouths and stupid eyes, hearkening to the din of voices that floated out on the tranquil air, the snatches of ribald songs, the raucous bursts of laughter, the clink of glasses, the clank of steel, the rattle of dice, and the strange soldier oaths that fell with every throw, and which to them must have sounded almost as words of ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... the other houses across the way. A wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard. Over the mantel was the familiar picture—usually, however, reserved for the fourth floor back—of a young lady having her shoes shined by a ribald small boy. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... terrible brute round the cage. She seemed to glory in her triumph, and when Mahdi butted into a corner and refused to stir, she took him by one leg, and towed him twice round the cage, and the tittering the crowd swelled to yells of derisions and ribald laughter, while Professor Thunder pranced about and cursed furiously. To save his show from being ruined with ridicule, he rushed in, seized the woman, and bundled ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came to be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head, a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover, he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... that both the children violently struggled, and that the round hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman,—while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all,—so long must its odium be upon the country's ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... they proclaimed a runaway slave. True to their Virginian instincts as she came near, they formed in line across the narrow bridge, and prepared to seize her. Seeing escape impossible in that quarter, she stopped suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. On came the profane and ribald crew, faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. On either hand, ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... Mr. Dreadful, "the Court, having with shame listened to your ribald effusion, I will ask you what you had to drink upon the night you and the Lord Mayor were found wandering under ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... spoke. Now and then the priests with the other prisoners cast suspicious glances towards him; but he continued to walk on, speaking so low that no one else but the unhappy lady could hear him; and thus the band of prisoners arrived at Smithfield. Here they were saluted by the ribald shouts of the populace, who seemed to delight in hurling all sorts of abusive epithets on their heads. A'Dale wanted to remain, but I kept to my purpose. My chief interest was with the unhappy lady. I rejoiced, however, to see that her countenance was calm and unmoved; ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... through his ignorance. Still I wish they were not there, and I hope the time will come when the beast-man will be so far subdued and tamed in us that the memory of him in literature shall be left to perish; that what is lewd and ribald in the great poets shall be kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... American camp, made to warn her lover of another attempt on the life of Washington, who must pass her father's house on his return from a distant settlement. The Tory knows nothing of this; but he starts whenever the men in the next room rattle the dice or break into a ribald song, and a frown of apprehension crosses his face as the foragers crunch by, half-barefoot, through the snow. The hours go on, and the noise in the next room increases; but it hushes suddenly when a knock at the door is heard. The Tory opens it, and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon ballad-monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while yet there ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... follow the track of the marauders, humbly imploring for the blood and offal of their own cattle which had been slaughtered for the soldiers' food! Such is the avowal which historical justice demands. But let me turn from further details of these painful and irritating scenes, or of the ribald frolics and revelry with which they were intermingled—races of naked women on horseback for the amusement of the camp at ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... remark, to which the "boss" assents, Johnny proceeds to shut and lock the tavern door. Soon after the windows of the Choctaw Chief show lightless, its interior silent, the moonbeams shining upon its shingled roof peacefully and innocently, as though it had never sheltered robber, and drunken talk or ribald ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... bleed him; brickbats are flying in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs. Only think of the smart young candidate's headache next morning in the days when soda-water was not invented! And remember too that the representatives were not entirely free from sympathy with the coarseness of their constituents. Just at the period of Hogarth's painting, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... had begun to march, closely followed by the trumpeters. Behind them a bevy of Columbines in many-coloured tarlatan skirts and hair flying wildly in the breeze, giggling, pushing, exchanging ribald jokes with the men behind, and getting kissed ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... things as "a fair piece of Moses' left horn, a whole pound of the wind that blew for Elijah in the cave on Mount Horeb and two feathers and an egg of the Holy Ghost" as a dove. All this, of course, not in ribald profanity, but in works intended for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... old print of 1746, full of vulgar triumph, reproduces a "Temple Bar, the City Golgotha," representing the Bar with three heads on the top of it, spiked on long iron rods. The devil looks down in ribald triumph from above, and waves a rebel banner, on which, besides three coffins and a crown, is the motto, "A crown or a grave." Underneath are written ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading British statesmen, while the most ribald defamers of the United States met with cheers from a majority of the House of Commons, and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of a friendly Government without rebuke from ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... hours, falsely so called. After that he was allowed to go where he liked, and even his mother sometimes felt relieved by his absence; so that he was continually in the men's huts, listening to their yarns—sometimes harmless bush adventures, sometimes, perhaps, ribald stories which he could not understand; but one day Tom Troubridge coming by the hut looked in quietly, and saw master Charles smoking a black pipe, (he was not more than fourteen,) and heard such a conversation going on that he advanced suddenly upon them, and ordered the boy ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... ripened scholar who wastes his effort," was the dry comment. "Most of the lads of the town are coarse louts who pattern after their ribald elders, Jack. They will lead ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... forth an officer of a regiment of Parisian Mobiles—went full of sanguine confidence; he came back with his regiment in mournful despondency. The undiscipline of his regiment, of the Parisian Mobiles generally, appears incredible. Their insolent disobedience to their officers, their ribald scoffs at their general—oh, it is sickening to speak of it! Alain distinguished himself by repressing a mutiny and is honoured by a signal compliment from the commander in a letter of recommendation to Palikao. But Palikao is nobody ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... assistant who lived in an attic of the same tenement-house as the Coupeaus and the Lorilleux. He was generally drunk and made ribald jests about his dismal calling. It was he who buried Gervaise Coupeau after she was found dead in an ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... such jesting,' said I. 'The dead are very dead and will not disturb anybody, but even the prejudices of respectable persons ought to be respected. A ribald like Jacques counts for nothing, but I did not expect ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... Farce shall Beauties show, Shall praise thy ribald Mirth, and maudlin Woe; Praise ev'n thy imitating Chaucer's Tales, And call that merry [1] Temple, Fame's Versailles: Thy [2] Shepherd-Song with Rapture they shall see, Which rivals Philips, as Banks rivals Lee; Thy [3] ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... out an arm to drag forward her son. "Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be a fighter and leader of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... research or the efforts of others. You are perfectly correct in your statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,—the last unhappily indisposed at present,—listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys and depraved men,—you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... edition of only 500 was published; but it achieved a success which Wordsworth had neither anticipated nor desired. There was a general guffaw of laughter, and all the copies were immediately sold; within a month a ribald public received a third edition, only to discover, with disappointment, that the funniest lines ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... A ribald cuckoo clamoured, And out of the copse the stroke Of the iron axe that hammered The iron heart ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various



Words linked to "Ribald" :   dirty, off-color, vulgarian, bawdy



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