"Ruff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father, mother; friar, nun; gander, goose; grandsire, grandam; hart, roe; horse, mare; husband, wife; king, queen; lad, lass; lord, lady; male, female; man, woman; master, mistress; Mister, Missis; (Mr., Mrs.;) milter, spawner; monk, nun; nephew, niece; papa, mamma; rake, jilt; ram, ewe; ruff, reeve; sire, dam; sir, madam; sloven, slut; son, daughter; stag, hind; steer, heifer; swain, nymph; uncle, aunt; wizard, witch; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... astonishing rise, development, and spread of the chrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt, or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovely head. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nations and times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held its own as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of sentiment. But here comes a flaunting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... far, and at the end of my walk I found the little white-flowered wood-ruff. It grew in a copse of young ash. When I had looked long at the flower, I delighted myself with the grace of the slim trees about it—their shining smoothness, their olive hue. Hard by stood a bush of wych elm; its tettered bark, overlined ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... tall, stepped and sharply pointed gable, flanked on either hand by slender, four-sided pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ankles and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... at tongue. The wench hath wit and matter of her own, And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit, Nature hath painted her a proper brown— A russet-colored wench that knows her worth. And mincing, too—should have her ruff propt up With supertasses, like a dame at Court, And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suit Of Genoa velvet, and so take her eye. Has she a heart? The ladies of Whitehall Are not so skittish, else does Darrell lie Most villainously. Often hath he said The art of blushing ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a man in middle life, handsomely dressed in black velvet, with hat and ruff. His face was sad, but the bright, dark eyes looked intelligently at the girls, and the whole face ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... usages of Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers, short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather jerkin and a trailing scarlet cloak that the crowd ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... of that was comforting, as though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice. He lingered a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to Winifred. 'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that there man in the night-cap, with the red ruff round his neck, is Sail's fancy man, and he sometimes lets her have a cargo of fish for services done and performed, you understand—and so Sail she comes down this morning, and she finds Poll having a phililoo with him, that's all; but I wish they would go and have it out somewhere else, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and rested upon the plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue, which is sometimes produced by metallic medicines, administered in excessive quantities; the eyes showed an undue proportion of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... young ladies attired themselves with much care, each with a view to effect. Margaret looked particularly to the assumption of a certain dignity, and her costume for the evening had been chosen with that end in view. A ruff, and her grand-mother's rich silk brocade, did give to her tall person all the dignity ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... head of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from her forehead in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff. When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up a little higher than the right; and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to her lips in two lines of light. He had dashed past that to reach ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... XIV.—had essayed, under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte, to render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... earlier CECILS stepped out of the frame in the Long Gallery. The stately figure is attired in white doublet, trunks, and hose, embroidered with pearls. On the purple surcoat, lined with red, gold buttons gleam. The white ruff is fastened at wrist and throat with gold buttons: the black cap is solely adorned with a knot of pearls; a golden cord hangs from the neck; the right hand rests upon the head of a large dog, that has, perhaps, a rather stuffed look; whilst the left negligently lounges ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... partner adopts the turn-up without your assistance, and you hold queen, seven; ten, eight, etc., in trumps, ruff as early as possible with the big one, and lead the ...
— The Laws of Euchre - As adopted by the Somerset Club of Boston, March 1, 1888 • H. C. Leeds
... time entering my office and closing the door after him. He then removed the lid from a small basket which he carried in his hand, and sure enough there were snugly ensconced a pair of beautiful living ruff-necked pigeons, as yellow as saffron and as bright as a double ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... long—quite, quite too long for Guy and Cyril. Granville was born, and grew to be a big boy, and was treated by everybody as the heir to Tilgate. And now the Colonel's difficulties gathered thicker around him. At last, in the fulness of time, the Admiral died, and slept with his fathers, whose Elizabethan ruff's were the honour and glory of the chancel at Tilgate; and then the day of reckoning was fairly upon him. How well he remembered that awful hour. He couldn't, he couldn't. He knew it was his duty to acknowledge his rightful sons and heirs, but he hadn't the courage. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... thin old lady, with blue eyes and pointed nose and chin. Her dress is always the same as to fashion. She wears a small, well-starched ruff, a laced stomacher, full petticoats, and a gown festooned and open in front, which, on particular occasions, is of ancient silk, the legacy of some former dame of the family, or an inheritance from her mother, who was housekeeper ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to antique modes. A fellow-student once told me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with modern life, he had hammered at the little gate of Merton and felt of a sudden his hat assume plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a ruff about his neck, the dangle of a cloak and a sword. I, too, have my Eliza-bethan, my Caroline moments. I have gone to bed Georgian and awoken Early Victorian. Even savagery has charmed me. And at such times I have often wished I could find in my ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... most of the tricks with one suit declaration, while with another, their adversaries can be equally successful. This is most apt to happen in two-suit hands, or when length in Trumps is coupled with a cross-ruff. In the ordinary run of evenly divided hands, there is not such great difference in the trick-taking ability of two declarations. The player who, except with an extraordinary hand, commits his side to ten or eleven tricks, after the adversaries have shown that with another declaration they do not ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear into an old gallery that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant Duke and Duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talked to them of a call of serjeants the year of the Spanish armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fashion like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Then with a presidential majesty holding his bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised, furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence: The court declareth that the porter who ate his bread at the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... an uproar in a town, Before them everything went down; Some tore a ruff, and some a gown, 'Gainst one another justling; They flew about like chaff i' th' wind; For haste some left their masks behind; Some could not stay their gloves to find; There never ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... happy ones whose desiccated hearts did or did not distend the pockets of her farthingale as live Persian kittens do those of their merchants. To be a lover you must have "a stocking void of holes, a ruff, a sword, a plume, and a knowledge how to talk." This last point is illustrated in these miniature romances after a fashion on which one of the differences of opinion above hinted at may arise. It is not, as in the later "Heroics," shown merely in lengthy harangues, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... family tried on me, such as going about carrying food conspicuously in the mouth, then pretending to visit a far-off spot and returning without it; but he always ended by mounting the oak brush, ruffling up his neck feathers till they stood out like a ruff, and uttering his cry; it can hardly be called of distress, it became so evidently perfunctory. His mate never tried deception, but relied upon skulking to and fro, unseen among ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to lose, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should hear it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such publick places unless he resolved ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... piteous burst of howls, followed by a hissing sound, and directly after Bruff appeared, tearing along on three legs, his last tucked out of sight, the rough shaggy hair which formed a ruff about his neck bristling; and close behind him, Jacko running as if ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... a big log, the ruff on his neck bristling. As Norah saw him he leaped upon it, and down on the other side. Then she heard him bark sharply, and flung herself over the log after him. He was licking something that lay in the shadows, almost ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... below worlds; a third, going deeper, might, Actaeon-like, surprise the bare soul. A curiously wrought net of gold caught her dark hair in its meshes, and pearls were in her ears, and around the white column of her throat rising between the ruff's gossamer walls. She fingered the racket, idly listening the while for a foot-fall beyond her round of trees. Hearing it at last, and taking it for her brother's, she looked up with a proud and ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... a prince's favourite, one admitted to his privacy (no uncommon word in Jeremy Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has 'quirpo' (cuerpo), the name given to a jacket fitting close to the body; 'quellio' (cuello), a ruff or neck-collar; and 'matachin', the title of a sword-dance; these are all frequent in our early dramatists; and 'flota' was the constant name of the treasure-fleet from the Indies. 'Intermess' is employed by Evelyn, and is the Spanish 'entremes', though ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... odd tremble caught the claim agent's lip, and he frowned to pull himself out of his own weakness before he made reply. Miss Lady, tall, well-rounded, dark-eyed, her ruff of red-brown hair thrown back, stood looking at him, her hand clasped upon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... with ruff and farthingale, could have said it with more consciousness of her own dignity, or more superb dismission of that of another. But probably Queen Elizabeth would not have cast upon her courtiers the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... advances, but he took very little notice of her. He evidently kept his "pleasantries," as Mademoiselle called them, for his friends, and would not waste them on strangers. How soft and thick his fur was! particularly just at the neck, where it stood out in a sort of ruff. How would he look in the new collar, and would it fit him properly? He had such a large neck. It would surely be a good plan to put the collar on, so that Mademoiselle might have all the pleasure of a great surprise when she came in. It was such a splendid ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... Frederick opened his eyes wide in astonishment; he did not know what to make of it, for Reinhold's dress was in keeping with anything sooner than a journeyman cooper's on travel. His doublet of fine black cloth, trimmed with slashed velvet, his dainty ruff, his short broadsword, and baretta with a long drooping feather, seemed rather to point to a prosperous merchant; and yet again there was a strange something about the face and form of the youth which completely negatived the idea of a merchant. Reinhold, noticing Frederick's doubting glances, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... has made about the forehead. Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and "banging," as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called. Let us see the Madonna brow once more. The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers: the opera is filled with Copley's portraits. The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers. Every new fashion brings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... sent, And bring'st a gown of glosing, lin'd with lust, A vardingale[258] of vain boast and fan of flattery, A ruff of riot and a cap of pride; And Double-dealing is ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... mark, to know next time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in face, An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads nowhither; ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... comin', too," she says from her chamber, and forth she come pavisandin' like a peacock—stuff, ruff, stomacher and all. She was ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... eminently simple, for you will find the time coming when to button a cuff or arrange a ruff will be a matter of absolute despair. You lie disconsolate in your berth, only desiring to be let alone to die; and then, if you are told, as you always are, that "you mustn't give way," that "you must rouse yourself" ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... to the comforts of dress than these. In winter they wear the skins of deer or fawns, prepared with the hair on, and rendered as fine and soft as chamois leather. In summer their apparel is of similar skins, but prepared without the hair. A ruff or tippet surrounds the neck; and the skin of the head of a deer forms a curious kind ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... the face was the face of a sentimental dream, the garb was the garb of royalty. Somebody's grandmother was on her way to a costume party. She wore the full court costume of the days of Queen Elizabeth I, complete with brocaded velvet gown, wide ruff collar, and ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... at, boss," said Uncle Remus, smiling a feeble smile. "I santered roun' 'bout er half nour, an den I begin fer ter feel sorter squeemish—sorter like I done bin an, swoller'd 'bout fo' poun's off'n de ruff een' uv er scantlin'. Look like ter me dat I wuz gwineter be sick, an' den hit look like I wuzzent. Bimeby a little pain showed 'is head an' sorter m'andered roun' like he wuz a lookin' fer a good place ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... dress that she wore—russet, as it should be, for country girls, with the loose sleeves folded back above her elbows that she might handle the linen; her apron of coarse linen, her steel-buckled shoes. He told her that he loved her better in that than in her costume of state—the ruff, the fardingale, the brocaded petticoat, and all the rest—in which he had seen her once last summer at Babington House. He talked then, when she would hear no more of that, of Tuesday seven-night, when they would meet for hawking in the lower chase of the Padley estates; and proceeded ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... expanded and the ruff on the back of his neck began to rise. He uttered a low, reverberating bark. It was almost a growl and it sounded threatening. He dashed down the hill ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... the hips, and was always much ornamented; they carried a smooth or ribbed cap on one side of the head, and a small upright collar adorned the coat. This collar was replaced, after the first half of the sixteenth century, by the high, starched ruff, which was kept out by wires; ladies wore it still larger, when it had somewhat the appearance of an open fan at the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... me not to do so no more, an' said suthin' to himself about devourin' widders. So I didn't darst to go up agin, he looked so kind o' furce an' sharp, till, last night, I reck'n'd the snow would sift in through the old ruff, an' I went up to offer him a comf'table for his bed. I knocked; but he didn't make no answer, so I pushed the door open an' went in. It was a good while sence I'd seen the inside o' the room,—for when he heerd me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... nasty!" flamed Dick, burying the grubby fingers of his right hand protectively in the fluffy mass of the puppy's half-grown ruff. "She's the dandiest dog ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... is the first. An antique Hall (Like Chanticlere) with panelled wall. A boy, or rather lad. A girl, Laughing with all her rows of pearl Before a portrait in a ruff. He meanwhile watches.... ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... in debt;"—never mind, never mind If your clothes are faded and torn: Mend them up, make them do; it is better by far Than to have the heart weary and worn. Who'll love you the more for the shape of your hat, Or your ruff, or the tie of your shoe, The cut of your vest, or your boots, or cravat, If they know you're in debt for the new? There's no comfort, I tell you, in walking the street In fine clothes, if you know you're in debt, And feel that, perchance, you some tradesman may meet, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James' ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... majesty of England; Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, Plodding tooth ports and costs for transportation, And that you sit as kings in your desires, Authority quite silent by your brawl, And you in ruff of your opinions clothed; What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled; and by this pattern Not one of you should live an aged man, For other ruffians, ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... grave and decorous figure was seated. His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Of vegetables first, next zoophytes, The tribe that dwells upon the confine strange 'Twixt plants and fish; some are there from their mouth Spit out their progeny, and some that breed, By suckers from their base or tubercles, Sea-hedgehog, madrepore, sea-ruff, or pad, Fungus, or sponge, or that gelatinous fish, That taken from its element at once Stinks, melts, and dies a fluid; so from these, Through many a tribe of less equivocal life, Dividual or insect, up I ranged, From sentient to percipient, small ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... from Angora, in Syria. It is much larger than the common cat; its hair is very long, especially about the neck, where it forms a fine ruff, of a silvery whiteness and silky texture, that on the tail is three or four inches long; these cats frequently spread their tails on their backs, as squirrels do. The colour is generally white, but sometimes light brown; they do not catch mice. This beautiful species does not degenerate ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... my own great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white smudge under the spot. There are members of this family—Aunt Eleanour, for instance—who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too—as he was before he died, of course. And very interesting ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... pointing to the fallen tenor with his sword. At the extreme left of the stage the contralto, in tights and plush doublet, turned to the audience, extending her hands, or flinging back her arms. She raised her eyebrows with each high note, and sunk her chin into her ruff when her voice descended. At certain intervals her notes blended with those of the soprano's ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, "See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived again; though means be never so inconsiderable, yet if ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... nature. If we are not repelled by the absurd subject, we have to admit that none of the immediate imitators of Venus and Adonis has equalled the juvenile Barnfield in the picturesqueness of his "fine ruff-footed doves," his "speckled flower call'd sops-in-wine," or his desire "by the bright glimmering of the starry light, to catch the long-bill'd woodcock." Two months later, in January 1595, Barnfield published his second volume, Cynthia, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... VI's and Mary's reigns. He walking, a convincing Holbein. The impression was of value to a cherisher of quaintness, and he must have wondered—not knowing me for such a character—why I stared at him. It wasn't him I was staring at, but some handsome Seymour or Dudley or Digby with a ruff and a round ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... this it is that we are needing now: The spring, the spring! These stifling fumes we bear Of royal incense and of monkish snuff, Of corpses in romantic cloak and ruff, Are bad for morals ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... observes that "the daisy with its wide plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's) flower. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" only too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the more philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had waded through the chaos which he set himself to survey, that he could lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own feet in the Tintoret descriptions—rather ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... to Ross, after the defeat of Balvenny, summoned the garrison to come forth, but all in vain; for they obstinately defended the house against the besiegers until, on a certain day, a cousin of Carr's advancing in the ruff of his pride, with his cocked carbine in his hand, to the very gates of the castle, bantering and threatening those within to give up the castle under all highest pain and danger, he was shot from within and killed outright. This did so grieve and incense Colonel Carr, that he began fairly ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... to play wif Ruff!" said Trouble. "I play wif Slider in barn, and den hims hoots get tired, so I bringed him over to ride ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... went on in good time. About an English mile before they came to Luebeck, some company appearing on the road, Whitelocke's lacqueys alighted out of their waggons, and Whitelocke was met upon the way by an ancient person of a good portly carriage, with a great white beard, and a greater ruff. He was attended with four coaches; the first had six good horses in it, and was handsome, but not rich. The gentleman, being alighted, and then Whitelocke also, he came and saluted Whitelocke, and spake to him in the High Dutch, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... track with his usual eagerness to witness or participate in every battle. Suddenly Alphonse Corse, who rode at Henry's aide, pointed out to him, not more than a hundred paces off, an officer wearing a felt hat, a great ruff, and a little furred cassock, mounted on a horse without armour or caparisons, galloping up and down and brandishing his sword at the carabineers to compel them to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... that it was the custom of Italian princes to maintain dwarfs in their households. This woman, probably a dependent, was dressed like a princess. Her dress though soiled was of stiff brocade embroidered with gold thread, and the high lace ruff, which made her swarthy complexion darker by contrast with its whiteness, was edged ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... had been carefully laid by as a sovereign protector from the evils of fire, floods, carnage, and—so say some ancient writers—from the bite of rabid dogs. Annis Vane, decked out in the bravest array her altered fortunes would permit, knelt by the blazing hearth. Her ruff was of the finest lace, and a row of milk-white pearls clasped her slender throat. She shaded her face from the fire, and piled up shining cones of bright-brown nuts that seemed ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... best, and convert his gait into an absurd waddle. His face was disfigured by a scar across one cheek that so drew that corner of his mouth downward as to produce a peculiarly forbidding expression. He also wore a bristling iron-grey beard that grew in form of a fringe or ruff, and added an air of ferocity to ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... throw him in another thing or two If he demurs: the whole should prove enough To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside, What's better, and what's all I care about, Get you the thirteen send for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The cousin! what does he to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Gusman, and putting his hand upon the Duke's shoulder began to loosen his ruff. Don Gusman shrank ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nohow. An' w'edder de professor am right dat dese yer earthquakes ain't shockin', I kin tell yo' right now dat it shocked me! Nor I ain't gwine ter gib it no secon' chance ter tumble dat ruff down ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... aprons, and the former in three-cornered hats, black breeches and stockings and thick low shoes. Then follows a fancy ball in the Guerzenich House, in which the lineal descendants of the burgomasters and councillors of old come out in ancient family trappings of black cloth or velvet, stiff white ruff and heavy gold chain from shoulder to shoulder, which their forefathers once wore in earnest. Among the museums and other additions of modern taste is the beautiful botanical garden and large conservatory, where flourish tropical plants in profusion—a thing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... sketch: it is dotted on all sides with busts in basso-relievo, enclosed in medallions, and of great diversity of character. One is a frowning warrior, arrayed in the helmet of an emperor of the lower empire; another, is a damsel attired in a ruff; a third, is a turbaned turk. The borders of the medallions are equally diversified: the cordeliere, well known in French heraldry, the vine-leaf, the oak-leaf, all appear as ornaments. The battlements are surmounted ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... given her had, however, the place of honour. Her sister, little Emilia told me, was married a month ago, and she was proceeding to make the little Dutch puppets in her baby-house enact the wedding, one being dressed in a black gown and stiff ruff, like a Genevan minister, when she caught a tone that made her cry out that mother was weeping, and stump across the floor in her stout little shoes to comfort her, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ovals that form the brim of the hat, and the soft, graceful arrangement of the hair in front that decreases the too broad effect of the brow, and the full fluffy ruff snuggled up closely to the chin, produce a pleasing transformation of the meagre-looking original that to the uninitiated seems little short of magical. The broad, cravat-like bows, and the flaring ones known as "incroyables," were beneficently wedge-like faces and throats ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... its dark brown mottled plumage and hoarse croaking note. These birds are very numerous in the reedy flats of the Murray, whence they call to one another like bull frogs. It is a higher bird than the above, with a ruff down the neck, which behind is naked. He has a fine bright eye, and darts with his bill with astonishing ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... head was bald; the hair on its sides short and frizzly. His beard was of a reddish tinge, trimmed square and bushy, beneath which his white ruff seemed to glisten from the sudden contrast. His forehead was high and retreating; his face pale, and-his cheek hollow and slightly wrinkled. His nose was small, looking ill suited to the other features, which were large and strongly-marked. His mouth was full, but compressed; and his teeth beautifully ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows. "Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and—and gone through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,—a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,—were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the foreign beard, and the aquiline features lent an added touch of distinction. One was reminded of those dangerously mild and rather sad faces of Spanish soldiers which look at one from Velasquez's canvases. This man might wear a ruff and a velvet doublet, or, better yet, a coat of mail, she reflected, instead of the well-cut but rather worn gray ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... little heads you've got, And such good-natured eyes! And ruff of wool all round your necks— How nicely ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties, and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the subject of a drama? Hah, softly ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... feathers expanded to the uttermost, a truly magnificent display. All his figures, though sometimes incorrect, owing to the scanty knowledge of the time, have a great deal of life. Each bird is presented both in repose, with plumage all folded smoothly back, and in excitement, with every fan and ruff and ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... unbridled ambition, accustomed to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify. They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form, the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the carriage of the head—the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes, but to them the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... afternoon, Ambrose came to the Dragon court. Even as Stephen figured now as a handsome prosperous young freeman of the City, Ambrose looked well in the sober black apparel and neat ruff of a lawyer's clerk—clerk indeed to the first lawyer in the kingdom, for the news had spread before him that Sir Thomas More had become ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were all inside and had finished supper, Daimur told them of the ship which was anchored at the Magician's door, and they immediately cried out, "It is the one he stole from Prince Redmond," and Prince Redmond, a big black dove with a huge red ruff and red crest, nodded, and said he ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... most guv out before, ole 'oman," he replied; "got a good ruff over de head now. Guess de white massar won't let ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of the bare hills deserves its beautiful name, "grace of God." We think of it as the sprigging of a divine mantle cast over the June world. The greater plantain, that after the recent rain has come out on the hills, with a ruff of purple feathers round its brown cone, neither deserves nor possesses a name connoting sacredness. It is interesting mainly as a plant that somehow became associated with the voyages and travels of Englishmen, and is known in America as "Englishman's ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... brooded on the silence, and Drake saw A woman come to meet him,—tall and pale And proud she seemed: behind her head two wings As of some mighty phantom butterfly Glimmered with jewel-sparks in the gold gloom. Her small, pure, grey-eyed face above her ruff Was chiselled like an agate; and he knew It was the Queen. Low bent he o'er her hand; And "Ah," she said, "Sir Francis Walsingham Hath told me what an English heart beats here! Know you what injuries the King of Spain Hath done ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... forjxetajxo. Rubric rubriko. Ruby rubeno. Ruby-color rugxa. Rudder direktilo. Rude malgxentila. Rudeness malrespekto. Ruddiness rugxeco. Ruddy rugxa. Rudiment (embryo) embrio. Rudiment (elements) elementajxo. Rue (botan.) ruto. Rue (to grieve) bedauxregi. Ruff krispo. Ruffian malbonulo. Ruffle (agitate) malkvietigi. Rug tapisxeto. Rugged sxtonplena, malebena. Ruin (remains) restajxo, ruinajxo. Ruin ruino, ruinoj. Ruin ruinigi. Ruinous ruina. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... brilliantly rosy, and whose black eyes were so vividly lustrous, that one might have fancied the delicate cap-border near them, in danger from their fire. Over her full-formed bust, she wore a clear, and stiffly-starched muslin habit-shirt of purest white, a beautiful lace-edged ruff around her throat, over her ample shoulders was thrown a fawn-coloured shawl, and she wore also, a silver gray gown of the material called Norwich crape, with an apron rivalling in whiteness cap, habit-shirt, and ruff. We are particular in describing the costume of this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... Amazonian Dames Contrive whereby to glorify their names. A ruff for Boston Neck of mud and turfe, Reaching from side to side, from surf to surf, Their nimble hands spin up like Christmas pyes, Their pastry by degrees on high doth rise ... The wheel at home counts in an holiday, Since while the mistress worketh it may play. A tribe ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here, and how the doctor—not the present ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yours. But I did not stop to argue about such matters. There is something else I wished to say. I want to tell you that you have greatly pleased the king with the new dance. Now teach him 'honor and ruff' and your fortune is made. He has had some Jews and Lombards in of late to teach him new games at cards, but yours is worth all of them." Then, somewhat hastily and irrelevantly, "I did not dance the new dance with any other ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... ladies who help receive come in handsome reception dresses. A skirt of light brocade with a dark velvet over-dress is very much worn at these receptions, and if made by a French artist is a beautiful dress. These dark velvets are usually made high, with a very rich lace ruff. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... about at pleasure,—your gentlest smile might prove a blow. She seldom spoke unless she were spoken to, and fell into long reveries, with her eyes on the window or the coals. She wore a horrible sort of ruff,—"illusion," I think Allis called it,—which, of all contrivances that she could have chosen to encircle her sallow neck, was exactly the most unbecoming. She was always knitting blue stockings,—I never discovered for what or ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... went on. "One o' them pesky barn doors got loose in the night, and it's beat itself 'most off the hinges, I guess. I must see and get it fixed afore Mis' Starlin's round, or she'll be hoppin'. The wind was enough to take the ruff off, but how it could lift that 'ere heavy latch, I ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away in every direction, leaving ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family, except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there is Sir Poyntz Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task—and so forth. How well in after life Pen remembered those effigies, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little boat was housed. There he found Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday. His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of his enemies. For flies, of innumerable ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... got as good blood in his veins as arrow privat 'squire in the county; and then his pursing is far from contentible. — Your humble sarvant had on a plain pea-green tabby sack, with my Runnela cap, ruff toupee, and side curls. — They said, I was the very moral of lady Rickmanstone, but not so pale — that may well be, for her ladyship is my elder by seven good years and more. — Now, Mrs Mary, our satiety ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... should have recoiled before the yellow tusks of eye-teeth, and the blackened stumps and shrunken gums revealed to me every time she spoke. She wore a print dress made neatly enough which was very clean, and a black crape ruff round her sallow neck. The shop was small but clean and at the back I saw, a kind of little sitting room. Into this I went while she ran up-stairs to prepare the room for my inspection. The carpet was ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Clara, meditatively, "is the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember and approve of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fetched his bands from pawn, And all his best apparel; Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn With droppings of the barrel; And those that hardly all the year Had bread to eat, or rags to wear, Will have both clothes and dainty fare, And all the day ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... at a single glance, have detected the sensible woman, in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm judicious step. Even her very garments seemed to partake of the prevailing character of their mistress: her ruff always looked more sensible than any other body's; her shawl sat most sensibly on her shoulders; her walking shoes were acknowledged to be very sensible; and she drew on her gloves with an air of sense, as ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... wilderness. He had the king's charter in his keeping, and was appointed the first governor of Massachusetts. Imagine him a person of grave and benevolent aspect, dressed in a black velvet suit, with a broad ruff around his neck, and a peaked beard upon his chin. {Foot Note: There is a statue representing John Winthrop in Scollay Square in Boston. He holds the charter in his hand, and a Bible is under his arm.} ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... soaking a rusk in it. Stephen thought this a disgusting sight, and could hardly bear to let his eyes rest on the thick rolls of fat that bulged over the man's low collar, all the way round his neck like a yellow ruff. Not trusting himself to speak just then, Stephen ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ill Humour will be much suppress'd, when we can have recourse to the Fashions of their Times, produce them in our Vindication, and be able to shew that it might have been as expensive in Queen Elizabeth's time only to wash and quill a Ruff, as it is now to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi |
