Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rustic   /rˈəstɪk/   Listen
Rustic

noun
1.
An unsophisticated country person.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rustic" Quotes from Famous Books



... A rustic once came to James and discussed prayer. The Master said you should pray in few words and not, as the heathens do, in a great many words, for the Father knows our needs. Well, he had once prayed just in that way, using few words, but his prayer had ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... mysterious event. Not far from my dormer window, a little to the left, stood the Inn Boeuf-Gras, an old auberge much patronized throughout the country. Three or four wagons, filled with sacks or casks, were always drawn up before the door, where the rustic drivers were in the habit of stopping, on their way to the market, to take their morning draught ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers—emigrants from the town into the country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... privacy and shelter; but she had not gone far before, on turning an abrupt corner, she came suddenly upon the figure of the gentleman she had been introduced to the night before, Mr. Laurence, who she had imagined to be with the shooting party. He was half lying, half sitting across a rustic seat which encircled the huge trunk of an old tree, with his eyes bent upon the ground and a cigar between his lips. He was more an intellectual and fine-looking than a handsome man, but he possessed two gifts which are much more winning ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... royal pair at my 'umble home, all its surroundings began to lose the charm of rustic simplicity, and appear shabby, inappropriate, and unendurable. It became evident that the entire place must be raised, and at once, to the level of ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... office. Hence our familiar bureaucracy, likely to become increasingly familiar. The desk was so called because covered with bureau, Old Fr. burel, "a thicke course cloath, of a brown russet, or darke mingled, colour" (Cotgrave), whence Mid. Eng. borel, rustic, clownish, lit. roughly clad, which occurs as late ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think of him as "poor Struan," Punchinello in a rustic comedy. Of Ingram, deliberately, she thought nothing. It had been necessary to survey her feelings of eight years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... tread the meadow, and we scent the thorn, We hail the day-spring of a summer's morn Nor mead at dawning day, nor thymy heath, Transcends the fragrance of the heifer's breath: May that dear fragrance, as it floats along O'er ev'ry flow'r that lives in rustic song; May all the sweets of meadows and of kine Embalm, O Health! this ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield

... sides of a range of hills beyond. A fanciful little wooden building, imitating the form of a Swiss cottage, was placed so as to command the prospect. Near it, in the shadow of the building, stood a rustic chair and table—with a color-box on one, and a portfolio on the other. Fluttering over the grass, at the mercy of the capricious breeze, was a neglected sheet of drawing-paper. Francine ran round the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... impression of a youth of dreamy idleness and simplicity. Where he had hunted rabbits and slept under a tent of tattered carpet during the warm summer nights stood a gaudily-painted hotel, flanked with wide verandahs and terraced lawns. And all about were people, in hammocks, on chairs or rustic seats, or wandering about enjoying the cool freshness of the lake breezes. He hurried along the wide newly-cut road which led from the station. At the high wire gate, erected so recently that the sods from the post-holes were yet green, he stopped. The successive changes of ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... horse's flanks, and pursued the route indicated by May until they came to the very verge of the city limits, where grand old oaks still waved their broad limbs in primeval vigor over sloping hills and picturesque declivities. Near a rustic bridge, which spanned a frozen stream, stood a few scattered huts, or cottages, towards the poorest of which she directed her footsteps. Standing on one of the broken flags, which formed a rude sort of pathway to the door, she ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... to the heart: it was as sincere as it was kind. All means were adopted to soften the roughness of our accommodation, which, if they lacked that elegance and convenience to which we had been accustomed in England, were not devoid of rustic comfort; at all events they were such as many settlers of the first respectability have been glad to content themselves with, and many have not been half so well lodged as we ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it, that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit, and his rustic awkwardness. She, perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross, and savored more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in the same taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of reluctance or reserve. For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... cotton mixed. We had red rustic shoes, soles one-half inch thick. They'd go a-whick a-whack. The mens had pants wid one seam and a right-hand ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... time the fellow looked away from Janice, fixing his eyes on Mrs. Meredith. Then he bowed easily and gracefully, saying, "Thank you." Apparently unconscious that for a moment he had left the Somerset burr off his tongue and the rustic pretence from his manner, he followed Peg ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... book are sufficiently curious and sufficiently interesting to be stated in detail. They go back to some ten years ago, when the author, after the rustic adventures which she describes in the following pages, had definitely settled in Paris as a working sempstress. The existence of a working sempstress in Paris, as elsewhere, is very hard; it usually ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... and to RE-CREATE over and over again in your own persons,—this precious jewel you throw away, and when it falls out of your possession by your own act, you think such an end was necessary and inevitable. Poor unhappy mortals! So self-sufficient, so proud, so ignorant! Like some foolish rustic, who, finding a diamond, sees no difference between it and a bit of glass, you, with the whole Universe sweeping around you in mighty beneficent circles of defensive, protective and ever re-creative power,—power which is yours ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady, I bid you an au revoir, with many millions of regrets for the inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are lamentably rustic hereabout." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... two weeks this photographic car had done good execution on the community. The artist himself appeared friendly, which greatly assisted his trade, openness to familiarity being a prime virtue in all rustic neighborhoods. Every youngster who came to the store after groceries, with a bag slung over the horse's neck in which to carry them, gave pap no peace until means were furnished for a rosy-cheeked tin-type of himself in a pink, green or purple case. The Appledore girls, handsome daughters of a rich ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... in the Earl of Surrey's Lyrics, many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind. The Shepherd's Calendar hath much poetry in his eclogues: indeed worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, sith neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazar in Italian, did affect it. Besides these, do I not remember to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed, that have poetical sinews in them: ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... in selling pins, needles, thread, and Irish linens in the Yadkin country, Findlay learned from the Pennsylvania settlers at Salisbury or at the Forks of the Yadkin of Boone's removal to the waters of the upper Yadkin. At Boone's rustic home, in the winter of 1768-9, Findlay visited his old comrade-in-arms of Braddock's campaign. On learning of Boone's failure during the preceding year to reach the Kentucky levels by way of the inhospitable Sandy region, Findlay again described to him the route through the Ouasioto Gap traversed ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... me the rustic entertainment of gathering wild raspberries. We found some at length, and regaled ourselves. I wished for more, and Phoebus, with his usual gallantry, wandered dreamily away into the forest on the quest. He has evidently ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... the hill tops in honour of Baal, the sun god, hence the name Baaltein, Beltane, i.e. Baal's fire. The Christian Church had so far modified the ceremonial as to substitute for the original idolatrous practice that of a day of rustic amusements. A fair or market at the same period which lasted for eight days had also been instituted by Royal charter. But even the practice of lighting fires on the hill tops was late in dying out, with the usual tenacity of custom ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... here were well begun and well begot: And after, every of this happy number, That have endur'd shrewd days and nights with us, Shall share the good of our returned fortune, According to the measure of their states. Meantime, forget this new-fall'n dignity, And fall into our rustic revelry:— Play, music!—and you brides and bridegrooms all, With measure heap'd in joy, to ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... is that?" said Madame, whose beaming good-humour only expanded the more when Jack explained that it was a pecuniary attention shown by rustic swains ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Don Rocco had taken his last supper in the monastic refectory, was reading his breviary for the last time in the little church of St. Luke, as rustic, simple, and religious as he, from its pavement to the black beams of its roof. His heart was heavy, poor priest, thus to leave his nest without honor; to carry humiliation and bitterness to his father and his sister, whose only hope and pride he was! He had every ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... powerful class, sharp, but honest and intelligent; who honored learning, and enjoyed discussions on metaphysical divinity. Their sons did not then leave the paternal acres to become clerks in distant cities; nor did their daughters spend their time in reading French novels, or sneering at rustic duties and labors. This age of progress had not arisen when everybody looks forward to a millennium of idleness and luxury, or to a fortune acquired by speculation and gambling rather than by the sweat of the brow,—an age, in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... artificer in mud and the artificer in wax obey the same tendency: they economize. Do they know what they are doing? Who would venture to suggest it in the case of the Bee grappling with her transcendental problem? The others, pursuing their rustic art, are no wiser. With all of them, there is no calculation, no premeditation, but simply blind obedience to the law ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... reached the little rustic stair which led downward from the path to the river's side; and on examining farther, perceived that at this place the stream was fordable; a huge flat rock, filling up a great part of the river's bed, occupied the middle, on either side of which ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... appeared, was a natural feature of the landscape, with a stream some twenty feet in width flowing through it. A walk had been constructed right round it, crossing the stream by a couple of rustic bridges; and for about one-half its length the banks had been most beautifully laid out as a flower-garden. For the remaining half of its length, however, nature had been allowed to have pretty much her own way, except at the point ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... I shall be no more. Good-bye, father! Good-bye; good——." Here her voice broke and a great sob almost broke her father's heart. He turned away from her bedside; he could not bear to see her suffer. He walked outside and sat down on a rustic bench; his head fell upon his bosom, and the great salt tears trickled down ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... edge of the declivity, which we bordered with large rocks; one of which I believe may remain to this day, as I carried it to the spot to form a seat, and my vanity was touched by the fact that it required two Arabs to raise it from the ground. I made a rustic table of split bamboos, and two garden seats opposite the entrance of the house, and we collected a number of wild plants and bulbs which we planted in little beds; we also sowed the seeds of different gourds that were to climb up on ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... cement, as even should the structure tumble down no great damage would be done, and it might easily be built up again. They had already raised it two or three feet in height before Nub had finished his culinary operations. Dinner was laid out, not, as hitherto, on the ground, but on a rustic-looking table, with benches on one side, and a large arm-chair at one end for Mr Shobbrok. Alice superintended the arrangements. They had leaves for plates, sticks for forks, and their clasp-knives enabled them to cut ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... manners, and wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite polished away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fawns and rustic deities of olden times. I wonder whether I shall excite anybody's wrath by saying this. It is no great matter. At all events, I felt most kindly towards these poor fugitives, but knew not precisely what to wish in their behalf, nor in the least ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the entire place. That it may not look aggressive, it should be set well inside the picturesque old wall. Stone gateposts and a rustic gate at the entrance on the {226} highway. A bungalow for the caretaker, wherein there shall be a room for the meetings of the Society's Executive Committee and Board. A tool and workshop of corresponding style. Several rustic ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... into the woods. In the woods the road stretched green and gold in the first horizontal sunlight. Among the thick trees, roofs covered with branches, were rows of long portable barracks with doors decorated with rustic work. At one place a sign announced in letters made of wattled sticks, ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos

... make up our minds to remain where we were. The louder we shouted for help, the more enraged the sow became, thirsting, as we had reason to believe, for our blood. She was the lankiest, the tallest, and grisliest beast I ever saw; her back, arching higher than a donkey's, resembled a rustic bridge; her loose-flapping ears nearly hid her small sunken, fiery eyes, their ends just covering one half of her mouth, which divided her head, as it were, into an upper and under storey, clearly showing that she had the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... resting on the rustic table in front of her, and one finger unconsciously twisting the lock of curly brown hair that strayed over her ear, she sat pushing her pencil rapidly across the pages of her note-book. At times she stopped to tap impatiently on the table, when the word she wanted failed to come. ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... believe this same passion drew him—master as he was of varied and vocal English—to clothe the bulk of his poetry in the Manx dialect, and thereby to miss his mark with the public, which inevitably mistook him for a rustic singer, a man ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... glance rested on a young man, of rustic dress and manners, which made him seem quite out of place ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger

... befell the Christian preachers who came settling among them, they took it as proof of the wrath of the older gods. When some log-rafts which were floating down the Tyne for the construction of an abbey at its mouth drifted with the monks who were at work on them out to sea, the rustic bystanders shouted, "Let nobody pray for them; let nobody pity these men; for they have taken away from us our old worship, and how their new-fangled customs are to be kept nobody knows." On foot, on horseback, Cuthbert wandered among listeners such as these, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... consequent fall of the water to a lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely lichened tombstones that mark the ancient grave-yard; and among the tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its iron gnomon worn to an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and moss. And around this little lonely yard sprang the young wood, thick as a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to admit, in slant lines along the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... remedy this most serious defect, and to bring the ground to its present degree of excellence, large sums had to be expended. The aspect of the race-course to-day, however, is really charming. A rustic air has been given to the stands, the ring, even to the stables that enclose the paddock, but it is a rusticity quite compatible with elegance, like that of the pretty Norman farm in the garden of Trianon. The purse for two-year-olds used ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... corn-cob dolls in the settle corner, and Bose, the brindled mastiff, lay on the braided mat, luxuriously warming his old legs. Thus employed, they made a pretty picture, these rosy boys and girls, in their homespun suits, with the rustic toys or tasks which most children nowadays would find very poor ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... Paris-Duverney. Here several hundred young gentlemen, mostly born poor and preferably the sons of officers, received a military education. The boys came to the school from their homes in the country between the ages of nine and eleven, rustic little figures sometimes, in wooden shoes and woolen caps, like the peasant lads who had been their early playmates. They were taught the duties of gentlemen and officers, cleanliness, an upright carriage, the manual and tactics, and something of military ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... his wife came up in the evening with a fee. They had put their heads together, and proffered one guinea. "Man and wife be one flesh, you know, Doctor," said the rustic miser. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... boisterous merry-making. His consort, on the other hand, is served with rites applying in the most direct manner the principle she represents. The shrine has a staff of female attendants for this part of the service of religion. The rustic worship of Palestine thus shows us a side of the religion of Western Asia which we know from other sources to have been widely diffused. A female deity like the Babylonian Ishtar (chapter vii.), is served with impure rites in great cities as well as in country districts, and her worship spread ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... all of you," said the pedant, halting at a little distance from the gate, "and let me go forward alone to knock for admission. Our numbers might alarm the good people of the farm, and lead them to fancy us a band of robbers, with designs upon their rustic Penates; as I am old, and inoffensive looking, they will not be afraid ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... before a little rude shrine in the rock, where, in a sculptured niche, was a picture of the Madonna and Child, with a locked glass door in front of it. The picture was a happy transcript of one of the fairest creations of the religious school of Florence, done by one of those rustic copyists of whom Italy is full, who appear to possess the instinct of painting, and to whom we owe many of those sweet faces which sometimes look down on us by the way-side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... Forestry, Fish, and Game Building, was the only exhibit of live game at the exposition. It was arranged in cages around a lake, the waters of which were stocked with fish. A commodious hunter's lodge, furnished in rustic style with the paraphernalia of the sportsman, was conspicuous upon the lake shore. The exhibit showed live deer, wild cat, mountain lion or panther, coyote, gray wolf, red fox, gray fox, opossum, raccoon, beaver, rabbit, fox ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... furnishing accommodation for between 600 and 700 guests; and it was quite full when we were there. The front is adorned with a projecting portico, supported by six fine Corinthian columns, resting upon a rustic basement. The edifice is crowned with a large dome, forty-six feet in diameter, having a beautiful Corinthian turret on the top. This dome is the most conspicuous object in the city. Viewed from a distance, it seems to stand in the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... He heard sounds of fiddle and fife from a roadside barn, and saw yellow light from its chinks; and then entering, he found many women dancing, old and young, and among them his affianced. He tried to snatch her round the waist for a waltz (they play Mme. Angot at our rustic balls), but the girl was unclutchable, and whispered, "Go; for these are witches, who will kill thee; and I am a witch also. Alas! I shall go to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... left her rustic cottage at Three Mile Cross, and removed to Reading, (the Belford Regis of her novel), she penned the following beautiful ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... 1861, I found myself, with some members of my family, in a small rustic pension in the village of Arzier, one of the highest villages of the pleasant slope by which the Jura passes down to the Lake of Geneva. The son of the house was an intelligent man, with a good knowledge of the natural curiosities which abound in that remarkable range of hills, and under ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... opinion of the genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with very few exceptions. His portraits have an air of truth never exceeded, and that set off with great power and artistical skill; and his rustic children are admirable. He stands alone, and never has had a successful imitator. The mock sentimentality, the affected refinement, which has been added to his simple style by other artists, is disgusting in the extreme. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... but foolish tutors threaten them with coarser and simpler dress as punishment. "If you do not study your lessons, if you do not take better care of your clothes, you shall be dressed like that little rustic." This is saying to him, "Rest assured that a man is nothing but what his clothes make him; your own worth depends on what you wear." Is it surprising that sage lessons like this so influence young men that they care for nothing ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... unbacked colt. untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked[obs3], unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite[obs3]; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical[obs3], doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c. (antiquated) 124; unfashionable; newfangled ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... village green in the shire. He often makes his appearance at horse-races, and sports his half-guinea and even his guinea at a time; keeps a good horse for his own riding, and to this day is fond of following the hounds, and is generally in at the death. He keeps up the rustic revels, and hospitalities too, for which his paternal farm-house has always been noted; has plenty of good cheer and dancing at harvest-home, and above all, keeps the "merry night,"[A] as it ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... little watercourse and held by struggling carters close to 5 the five-barred gate until the coach had passed the narrow turning in the road. Yo-ho! By churches dropped down by themselves in quiet nooks, with rustic burial grounds about them, where the graves are green and daisies sleep—for it is evening—on the bosoms of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... indeed ridiculous, but the original import of the verb deck is, to cover; so in some parts they yet say deck the table. This sense nay be borne, but perhaps the poet wrote fleck'd, which I think is still used in rustic language of drops falling upon water. Dr. Warburton reads mock'd, the Oxford edition brack'd. (see ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... so much by way of introduction. It is with the son and not with the father that we have to deal. Young Norman, after spending his earlier days amid the rustic environs of his father's manse—the Scotch equivalent for parsonage—at Campsie, entered the University of Glasgow as a divinity student. So far as we have been able to ascertain, he made his first public appearance, while still in his "teens," ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... dust of the highway, You have no depths of fragrant bloom; And what could you learn in a rustic byway To fit you to lie ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely moorlands, where narrow, brown foot-tracks thread the expanse of green waste, and occasionally a hawk hovers overhead, or the mountain ash hangs its scarlet berries above the huge fallen stones set up by the Druids in the old days; he sees them ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... their waxen images consumed before a fire—that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed—that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest—or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring—were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld—has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... continents as "The Wayside," is a unique, many gabled old mansion, situated near the road at the base of a pine-covered hill, facing broad, level fields, and commanding a view of charming rural scenery. Its dozen green acres are laid out in rustic paths; but with the exception of the removal of unsightly underbrush, the landscape is left in a wild and picturesque state. Immediately in the rear of the house, however, A. Bronson Alcott, a former occupant, planned a series of terraces, and thereon ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... Mellicent was overpowered, and could only blush and stammer in school-girl fashion. Her own perfect consciousness of the fact added fuel to her embarrassment, and a full-length mirror at the opposite side of the room presented such an exasperating contrast of rustic awkwardness and dainty grace, as she and Peggy stood side by side, that her heart died down within her. Poor Mellicent! her new coat and skirt had been made by the very best dressmaker in the village, and had been ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... there is "that yew tree's shade." There are "the frail memorials," "with uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked;" there "the name, the years, spelt by the unlettered muse;" and the holy texts strewn round "that teach the rustic moralist to die." There is still "the ivy-mantled tower," tho the "moping owl" that evening did not "to the moon complain," partly because there was no moon to complain to, and possibly because there was no moping owl in the tower. But there was one little circumstance ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... dozen gendarmes rushed upon the scene, causing a general stampede among the disciples of the onion and a hasty adjournment of the festival. What law against irregular assemblages was infringed by these onion-worshipers is not clear, for one can hardly detect sedition lurking under the rustic ditty, and it is equally difficult to suspect an Orsini bomb conspiracy of being typified by the conjuring of prodigious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... lawn stretched before him to the door of the pavilion, and here, on a rustic seat before an equally rustic table, sat a long lean gentleman, in a suit of Lincoln green faced with scarlet, who gazed into a pewter tankard. His sword lay on the turf beside him, and a hat of soft cloth edged with feathers hung on the arm ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of Monteblanco's garden, reclining on a rustic seat, under the fragrant canopy of the myrtle and arbutus, sat a female form enveloped in a loosely flowing dress of virgin whiteness. The air was cool and serene, and except the rustling of the surrounding foliage, when agitated by the breeze, or the soft ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... bring forth more violent deeds. His eyes he op'nd, and beheld a field, Part arable and tilth, whereon were Sheaves 430 New reapt, the other part sheep-walks and foulds; Ith' midst an Altar as the Land-mark stood Rustic, of grassie sord; thither anon A sweatie Reaper from his Tillage brought First Fruits, the green Eare, and the yellow Sheaf, Uncull'd, as came to hand; a Shepherd next More meek came with the Firstlings of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... us, including the lady I have mentioned, availed ourselves of this permission, and the man led us upstairs to a first-floor room, where a big wood-fire was blazing. Before it sat his wife and his daughter, both of them good specimens of French rustic beauty. With great good-nature, they at once made room for us, and added more fuel to ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... well-posed tableau, no audience to such a charming scene. The pity of it struck Destiny, and Destiny flashed the white of Betty's dress, a shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back into the wood's shadow, shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand, looked again, and began a detour which landed the rustic boots, all silently, behind the shed, at a spot where a knot-hole served as frame for the little picture. The ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... gracious: she regretted his early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... in a rich meadow ground, with gently shelving, softly broken sides; the initiation of the wilder scenery further down the valley. Here were the cottages Mr. Carlisle had spoken of. They looked very picturesque and very inviting too; standing on either side the stream, across which a rude rustic bridge was thrown. Each cottage had its paling enclosure, and built of grey rough stone, with deep sloping roofs and bright little casements, they looked the very ideal of humble homes. No smoke rose from the chimneys, and nobody was ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into Mouldi-warps; but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless others, the bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as some would have us believe. The mould—and very fine mould it is—is warped, turned up by the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... recitative extolling the wealth of the vintage. This chorus ("Joyful the Liquor flows") is in two parts,—first a hymn in praise of wine, sung by the tippling revellers, and second, a dance tempo, full of life and beauty, with imitations of the bagpipe and rustic fiddles, the melody being a favorite Austrian dance-air. With this rollicking combination, for the two movements are interwoven, the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... when the daughter is her age she will be a harridan, too, the gentle rustic beauties have gone out of date, like the old poets. The schoolmaster is much needed here to teach young women not to compare gentlemen even if they are pedestrianizing, to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... two immense cottonwood trees, the trunk of one of which was encircled by a rustic bench, cast an inviting shade in front of the house and wide veranda which stretched its length along two sides of the low, one storied adobe structure. Honeysuckle and white clematis and pink and scarlet passion ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... seen, not even a bird. "I must have been mistaken," he thought, "but it's very odd; I never heard anything more clearly in my life." He picked up his knife, and moved further along the turf walk, a good deal disturbed and rather nervous. At the end of it there was a rustic sort of shed, which had once been an arbour, but was now only used for gardening tools, baskets, and rubbish: over the entrance hung a mass of white climbing roses. Walking slowly towards this, and cutting a ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... rustic bridge, we pass through a garden (for it is no less, though man has had no spade in it) of pinks, marigolds, cyclamens, and heart's-ease, &c. &c.; the moist meadow land below is a perfect jungle of lofty grasses, all fragrant and in flower, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... whimsical enough. There was something about the irony of his position in Black Rock which interested him even more than the drama that lay hidden with McGuire's Nemesis in the pine woods. And he couldn't deny the fact that this rustic, this primitive Beth Cameron was as fine a little lady as one might meet anywhere in the wide world. She had amused him at first with originality, charmed him with simplicity, amazed him later with talent and now had disarmed him with trust in his integrity. If at any moment the idea had entered ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... consolations may be. Just as the fear of a king for the loss of his kingdom, is greater than that of a mendicant who is in peril of losing ten farthings; and more important is the care of a prince over a republic, than that of a rustic over a herd of swine; as perchance the pleasures and delights of the one are greater than the pleasures and delights of the other. Therefore the loving and aspiring higher, brings with it greater glory and majesty, with more care, thought, and pain: I mean ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... of 'Wuthering heights,' I admit the charge, for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been cast in ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte

... in tradition, the half-obscured names of the sites celebrated in classic story, and the spectacle of the white oxen drawing the rustic carts of Virgil's time—these things roused in him such an echo as Chevy Chase roused in the noble Sidney, and made him shout with joy. A pensive vein of contemporary reflection enriches the book with passages ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... to the sports of Krishna in the groves of Vrinda with the rustic children who were ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... of May. The weather was intensely hot, and these rustic bowers were found to be refreshingly cool and grateful. The name of this friendly chief was Casquin. Here the army remained for three days, without a ripple of unfriendly feeling arising between the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... girls did neither one thing nor another. They dressed themselves in their best, making a point of it, and failed. They assembled themselves together of set purpose to be lively, and they were infectiously dismal. They did not dress well: one looked rustic; another was dowdyish; a third was over-fine; a fourth was insignificant. Their bearing was not good, in the main. They danced, and whispered, and laughed, and looked like milkmaids. They had no style, no figure. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But, "No, no," she said, "it's my lord's orders," and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his village spelled agony to the poor rustic. Still he thought he would get used to the new home which his son had chosen. But the strange journey with locomotive and steamship bewildered him dreadfully; and the clamor of the metropolis, into which he was flung pell-mell, altogether ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... who in some village-child unknown, With rustic grace and fantasy bedeck'd And in her simple loveliness alone, A sister finds;—and the long years' neglect Effaces with warm love and nursing care, And takes her heart to heart, And in her treasured treasures bids her ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... is a version of The Sleeper and the Waker—with a vengeance! Abu Hasan the Wag, the Tinker, and the Rustic, and others thus practiced upon by frolic-loving princes and dukes, had each, at least, a most delightful "dream." But when a man is similarly handled by the "wife of his bosom"—in stories, only, of course—the case is ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... door; for our kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on summer evenings to air the room. The very stars to which I then raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars for glittering on the rustic objects among which ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an hour—precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's first coming to Lichfield.... Once the door of a house across the street was opened, with a widening gush of amber light ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... the day, we found a group of visiters in this new curvilinear-building, who were inspecting their mightinesses the lions and large quadrupeds. There were likewise family parties in the walks, and each of the rustic buildings had its visiters. One of the prettiest additions is a beaver-dam, with picturesque and tower-like crag for the larger specimens of the Falco tribe. The enclosures for Indian and other rare cattle also aid the interesting character of the whole scene. A long glazed building is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... they solaced themselves in the land of Beulah for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds. (The Latin poets called the birds solatia ruris, because they refreshed and cheered the rustic labourers with their sweet singing.) And every day the flowers appeared in the earth, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day, for ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... some of the finest groups of the "Musee." Joined to this, in summer, for perspective, the deep shade of a verdant green; quiet, loaded with flowers, peopled with birds, watered by a little brook of living water, which, before it spreads itself over the short grass, falls from a black and rustic rock, shining like a ribbon of silver gauze, and is lost in a pearly wave, in a limpid basin, where two fine swans ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... brink of a deep ghyll filled with lichened boulders and russet ferns, with a firwood close behind it, and in front a wide vista of moors and fells that stood out darkly blue against the evening light. Near the stone porch, a rustic table stood beside a row of tall ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the cure or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and his plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time, begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic gentry was not to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... aside, and made room for him on the carved rustic settee, which was exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in, but which was in perfect harmony with the background of gigantic palmettos. He nodded gratefully and took the place, and the manner of his ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... present century, Broadway had extended above the present City Hall Park, which had been enclosed as a pleasure ground in 1785. It was taken up along its upper portion mainly with cottages, and buildings of a decidedly rustic character. In 1805 the street was paved in front of the Park, and in 1803 the present City Hall was begun on the site of the old Poor House. It was completed in 1812. The principal hotels, and many ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... better—"the whole capable of the greatest improvement."—Come, that seems true however—I shall have plenty to do, that's one comfort—I have such contrivances! I'll have a canal run through my kitchen.—I must give this rustic some idea of my consequence. [Aside.] You must know, Farmer, you have the honour of conversing with a man, who has obtained patents for tweezers, tooth-picks, and tinder boxes—to a philosopher, who has been consulted ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton

... distance from her house and near the brook was a rustic seat beneath the maple. Many hours she had passed there with him, and many more alone with only sad thoughts for company, when the brook's music seemed a voice of sympathy. Even when a child she had learned to love this spot, and the low, sweet murmur of the stream. Early that ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... noise—the creak of a rustic wooden gate on its hinges; a figure approached. And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her Highness the Shereefa of Wazan. She was not called Zuleika, but Emily—her maiden name had been Keene, and she came not from the rose-bordered bowers of ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... a walk of white gravel to where a circle of Hiawatha roses were trained into a graceful mosque, now daintily glorious with its solid covering of yellow-hearted red blooms. Within this retreat was a rustic bench, and on this Hunt seated her and took a place beside her. He looked her over with the cool, direct, studious eyes which reminded her of his gaze when ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... into the garden and sat down on the rustic bench where he and Pauline had quarreled. He had just taken up his newspaper when he was startled by the spring of a small warm body fairly into his face. Lowering the torn paper, he saw Pauline's dog cavorting around the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody—a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recently—when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Meridional with a Horrible divergent squint, made ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... ease, Midst country wit, and rustic repartees. One drank to Ellen, if such might be found, And archly glanced at female faces round. If one with tilted can began to bawl, ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... the bank carefully to see if she could find any rock or log to help her out. Nothing available could be seen, but help appeared from a most unlooked for quarter. A tall, severe-looking man rose from a rustic seat behind a tree which had ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... and it wasn't he—but when I come to think of it, the youngster had that same rustic look to him. By Jove, I am sorry it was a Revercomb," he ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... this imagination he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers, no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic phrases, which I had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... and the ladies of her court played at farming in the Park of the Petite Trainon, at Versailles; but they wore silk gowns and powdered wigs. To be rustic was the fad of the day (there was a cult for gardening in England); but shepherdesses were confined to tapestries, and, while the aristocracy held the stage, it played the game ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... the trees in light. A storm had cleared the air during the night and it was deliciously fresh and sweet. At long intervals a horseman passing along the Allee des Veuves broke the silence and solitude. On the outskirts of the shady avenue, over against a rustic cottage known as La Belle Lilloise, Evariste sat on a wooden bench waiting for Elodie. Since the day their fingers had met over the embroidery and their breaths had mingled, he had never been back to the Amour peintre. For a whole week his proud stoicism ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... comprehending her. It was from intelligent perception and not merely from the feminine instinct for making excuses, that she said to herself that John was worn out with the strain of burdens long and uncomplainingly borne; and she was, it might be added, near enough to the primitive savagery of the rustic New Englanders of the last generation, to find it perfectly a matter of course that a man should make of his womenfolk a sort of scapegoat upon whom to visit his wrath against the sins alike of fate and of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates



Words linked to "Rustic" :   yahoo, countryman, yokel, bumpkin, ruralist, coon, redneck, hillbilly, rube, peasant, common person, countrywoman, cracker, woodman, woodsman, commoner, bucolic, chawbacon, common man, hayseed, provincial, countryfied, rural, bushwhacker



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com