"Slick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Well, now, I got a chart of the bay near Vallejo; the channel's all right, but there are mudflats that run out from shore three miles. Enough water for a whitehall, but not enough for—well, for the patrol boat, for instance. Two or three slick boys, of a foggy night—of course, I'm not in that kind of game, but strike! it would be a deal now, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... "Well, I'll do it—slick off;" said the hunter, shouldering his rifle, and striding away in the direction of a coppice into which he had observed Loo disappear, with the air of a man who meant to pursue and kill a ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... laughing. "Yes, but don't let's have a stopper over all, Tom," replied his father. "I consider all this excessively diverting. Pray, Captain, does everything else go fast in the new country?" "Everything with us clear, slick, I guess." "What sort of horses have you in America?" inquired I. "Our Kentuck horses, I've a notion, would surprise you. They're almighty goers at a trot, beat a N. W. gale of wind. I once took an Englishman with me in a gig up Alabama country, and he says, 'What's this great church yard ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me," said Captain Wass. "I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that he's a slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we haven't been able to worm it out of that passenger how it was done, either. Financing in these days comes pretty nigh to running without lights and under forced draught. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... he object to your having a good education in Denver? And look at the way he dresses you, Polly! I don't want you to think I am poking fun at you, 'cause I'm not, but the way you slick back your hair into two long braids and the baggy skirts you wear are simply outlandish. If I had that wonderful curly chestnut hair I'd make so much of it that ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... it is; but I have heard the term used in a political connection. In the States we say that if a man is very diplomatic he uses soft soap, so I suppose it has lubricating qualities. Sam Slick used the term 'soft sawder' in the same way; but what sawder is, soft or hard, I haven't ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... slick!" exclaimed Mr. Blackford. "Well, I wish you good luck, Mr. Swift, and if I see those scoundrels around this neighborhood again I'll make 'em ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... it, George," said my uncle, with sudden fervour "Come here and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all slick, and then make it woosh. I know you can. Oh! I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... can see her An' she got de basket dere Wit' de fine t'ing for de chil'ren nice an' slick— For dey can't get fat on air— Cucumber, milk, an' onion, some leetle cake also De ole gran'moder 's makin' on de farm few days ago— W'at 's use buy dollar dinner mak' ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... publican. "I'll tell yer what. Jist leave the 'the' an' paint in 'good' after it. That'll make it read slick." Pleased with this solution of the difficulty, the hotel-keeper retired to the "public," with a parting invitation to the painter to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... perfectly willing, and, with their heads close together, they had a long and close consultation. When Asbury was gone, Mr. Bingo lay back in his chair and laughed. "I'm a slick duck," ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Injuns' at the Cape in six months for the sum of 5,000,000 dollars! 'We should be ekal,' quoth he, 'to thirty thousand troops with such tarnal, stiff, clumsy consarns as them reg'lation muskets is. We should do it slick, right away.' This may seem only a piece of fun, but such it does not appear to the author, who turns from fun to facts and figures, and calculates what would be the result of an encounter between English and American men-of-war, if the latter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... night a few times, but they never caught anybody that I heard. Seems like the thieves were too slick, or else—" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... The engines were old, and the gravity generator was one of the first models. But Wilcox knew his business. The place was slick enough, and there was the good clean smell of metal working right. I could feel the controls in my hands, and my nerves itched as I went about making a perfunctory token examination. I even opened the fuel lockers ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... out, like an ant-eater's long tongue, Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible, And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures—slick, Their juice enriched his ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... money her own father left her, and her uncle frittered away and pertends it cost him all that, and he's been supporting her! Well, we took that, too, and we won't get much out of that even if we do win. Then there come along one of these here rich guys with a pocket full of money and a nice slick tongue wanting to be protected from the law in some devilment, and him we turned down flat! That's how it goes in our office. I can't just figger out how it's coming out! But he's a good guy, a white man if there ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... powdered as any of the natives I stumbled across a single large room bordered at one side by a bar and a number of small tables (all well patronized), and was brought up at the counter, under the alert eyes of a clerk coatless, silk-shirted, diamond-scarfed, pomaded and slick-haired, waiting with register ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... took to hevin' my porridge in a shaller plate, so that there seemed twice as much on 't as there really was, and to hollerin' my cake out from the under side, so that, when it was reduced to a mere shell, it still represented what it wa' n't; a trick that I found to work very slick, especially when I imagined Rose a-lookin' at my shaller plate, and not knowin' how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... what a lot o' votes!' Den dey all look an' 'llowed dar war a heap mo' votes than dey'd got names. So they all turned in ter count de votes. Dar wuz two kinds on 'em. One wuz little bits ob slick, shiny fellers, and de odders jes common big ones. When dey'd got 'em all counted they done some figurin,' an' sed dey'd hev ter draw out 'bout t'ree hundred an' fifty votes. So dey put 'em all back in de box, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... she caught sight of her mistress, whose white, wasted face wrung from her that cry. Stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, she waited until toast, tea, egg, and all had disappeared, then, with the exclamation, "She's et 'em all up slick and clean," she walked ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... in a little trouble last night!" gossiped the slick citizen with his landlady. "The fight was in this very house, was ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... sorter dis way, boss. I wuz stannin' down dere by Mars John Jeems's bank, chattin' wid Sis Tempy, w'ich I ain't seed 'er befo' now gwine on seven year, an' watchin' de folks trompin' by, w'en one er deze yer slick-lookin' niggers, wid a bee-gum hat an' a brass watch ez big ez de head uv a beerbar'l, come long an' bresh up agin me—so. Dere wuz two un um, an' dey went long gigglin' an' laffin' like a nes'ful er yaller-hammers. Bimeby dey come long agin ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... now, if that trailer that I am pretty sure Montagne Lewis sent after me does not get wise to the subject of our talk, it may be a slick job we have done and will do. I admit I am rather afraid of the enemy. You Swifts must keep your ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... says to me (for the steward slick Of the 'Henery Jo' was I): 'This sailor life's the very old Nick— On the lakes ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... mean game on the old lady, too, to take those opals so slick, and give her all that bad feeling; but if she will keep such tricky pets, why she's got to pay for it, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... out, and ice it with rose-water and sugar being made as thick as butter for fritters, to spread it on with a wing feather, and put it into the oven again; when you see it rise high, then take it out and garnish it with some pretty conceits made of the same stuff, slick long comfets upright on ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... have any friend with a consumption," said he, "send him to Thamesville; consumption would walk off slick as soon as he got the ague. No disorder is guilty of coming on before it, and it ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... (except citizens of the U.S.A.) pay half a dollar to the Treasurer right off the reel slick away, and that the sum so collected be equally divided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... was a real softy, with shining shoes, slick hair, and all that. About as ready to go on a tramp as a girl. I couldn't ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... know. As tall as himself and all shiny and slick. It was slim and sort o' knobby like this wood—what's the name of it, now?—they make fish poles out of. Only the real big-bugs in spiritualism use 'em. They're dangerous. You wouldn't caich me touchin' it or goin' in there even now. I says to Mrs. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... responded Garry. "First thing to do now is to put a bit of distance between us and that house. Don't want any of that gang to come and find us snooping around. Everything has gone as slick as a whistle so far, and we don't want any foolish oversight to queer it. I move we make a break for town and hive in somewhere and wait for daylight. Of course we can go to Everett's house, but we shouldn't bust in on ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about things—but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery, and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything for ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... accordingly, on many proper and improper occasions, renewed and recelebrated the event, breathing out meanwhile, between his pewter mugs, scathing anathemas against the "idiots" who had defeated him out of his just rights, and who were stupid enough to believe in the school of Verboeckhoeven. Slick and shiny Verboeckhoeven, "the mechanic," he would call him, with his fists closed tight, who painted the hair on every one of his sheep as if it were curled by a pair of barber's tongs—not dirty and woolly and full of suggestions ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dressed deir fines'—Heish yo' mouf an' git away, Ain't seen no sich fancy dressin' sence las' quah'tly meetin' day; Gals all dressed in silks an' satins, not a wrinkle ner a crease, Eyes a-battin', teeth a-shinin', haih breshed back ez slick ez grease; Sku'ts all tucked an' puffed an' ruffled, evah blessed seam an' stitch; Ef you 'd seen 'em wif deir mistus, could n't swahed to which was which. Men all dressed up in Prince Alberts, swaller-tails 'u'd tek yo' bref! I cain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that dress fer years; How she'd have appliqued revers; The kind o' trimmin' she would pick; How 't would be made to fit her slick; The kind o' black silk she would choose, The pattern she would like to use. An' I can mind the time when Pa Give twenty dollars right to Ma, An' said: "Now that's enough, I guess, Go buy yourself that party dress." An' Ma would ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... as you look into the placid face of some matron, you feel like uncovering yourself, for you can see the innocence looking out of her eyes. You are curious to know whither so many are wending their way, and meeting a sailor-boy, he tells you it is "fifth day," and if you follow in the wake of the "slick bonnets," they will pilot you to their nearest light-house; but precious little light you will get unless the spirit move some of them to pick up the wick. You move on with the rest till you come to their house of worship, which appears as humble as ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... stony-hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick French audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogether French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked the difference. The men painted as they spoke—with certainty. The club indulges in ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... was the end of the marshes, and then we did rig up our sail, and 'twas a fine old fly, I tell you. My, how I enjoyed it! The breeze had come up a little, and sent us cutting through the water as slick as your big knife cuts through a loaf of bread. We didn't stop at all, till it was time to make camp, and then we had a real good time, for the professor is ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... exclaimed Tom. "How do you ever do it, Marjorie? I did a poem, but it doesn't run nice and slick like yours." ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... talker he wouldn't be holding the job he's got," Lone argued. "Don't get the wrong idea again, Swan. Yuh may pin this on to Al, but that won't let the Sawtooth in. The Sawtooth's too slick for that. They'd be more likely to make up a lynching party right in the outfit and hang Al as an example than they would try to shield him. He's played a lone hand, Swan, right from the start, unless I'm badly mistaken. The Sawtooth's paid him ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... not take many minutes for Nick to discover that his congratulations, while appreciated, were not entirely acceptable, and he went on to say: "Job, there was not a man among us that as much as suspected those kids of having done that slick job at the bank." ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... just like him to go off and get full of liquor," muttered the young man, with a scowl. "I really ought to part company with him. But when he is perfectly sober he certainly is a slick one," ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... with a smile which for some reason disconcerted Noonan. He sensed with considerable irritation the social and class breach between himself and Remington, and while he did not understand it he resented it. He called him "slick" to Wes' and Doolittle and loudly bewailed their choice of him ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... last Fortnight had Lumbago, which makes it much easier to sit down than to get up again. However, the time goes, and I am surprised to find Sunday come round again. (Here is my funny little Reader come—to give me 'All the Year Round' and Sam Slick.) ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... in here one day last week. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. I had got my house slick as a pin, and my dinner under way (I was goin' to have a b'iled dinner, and a cherry puddin' b'iled with sweet sass to eat on it), and I sot down to finish sewin' up the breadth of my new rag carpet. I thought I would get it done while I hadn't so much to do, for ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... cords: it is a wonder that the women can stir in such unwieldy slippers. Our party had stopped to collect specimens of the lead ore, when the carriages were instantly surrounded by these females, offering ore, zinc, slick-and-slide, and various quartz crystals and fluor spars for sale; some of the women were very old, and one in particular, who had worked in the mine from her youth, was nearly a hundred years of age, yet she was upright and active, and wrinkles alone ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... his Methody days, an' believes he's always been a sailorman. Well, that's his business, ain't it? If he takes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game? There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick Dick Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow, naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of the Comp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest, now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... kids. My eyes—but you're a slick trio, girls. Pale lavender, pale blue, and pale pink, and all quite sophisticatedly decollete. You go with the decorations, too. I don't know quite why you ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... off. The clothing of both men and women is worn out before they ever change. A few who lived in the towns wore more clothing than those in the country. The men wore pants which seemed to cling to the skin, they were so tight. Those in town were no cleaner than outsiders. They get so filthy and slick that an American can smell one as far almost as he can see. The more clothes a Morro wears the filthier he is. Those wearing no clothing, except the girdle around the loins, are the less filthy. Nothing is worn ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... can stop her real quick if I want to," he explained jauntily. "Ye can do 'most anythin' with these 'ere things if ye only know how, Dianthy. Didn't we come slick?" ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... with me, still occasionally snickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him until the gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said, with a nervous, hasty relish, "The Widow Sproud is slick," and departed. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... and murmured gossip in his ear. "George Doble and Miller claim they're goin' to Denver to run some skin game at a street fair. They're sure slick guys." ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just like Miss Bray's. Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... I thought, 'this is odd.' But we came pretty quick To a sort of a quad That was all of red brick, And I says to the porter,—'R. Browning: free passes; and kindly look slick.' ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by a short, thin woman, of dark complexion, small peering black eyes, and slick, shining hair of the same hue, which was arranged with an ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... laughed old Sal. "They wanted him bad fer breakin' into a house an' mos' killin' the lady an' gittin' aff wid de jewl'ry. He beat it dat noight an' ain't none o' us seen him these two year. He were a slick one, he were awful smart at breakin' an' stealin'. Mebbe Jimmie knows, but Jimmie, he's in jail, serving his time fer shootin' a man in the hand durin' a dhrunken fight. Jimmie, he's no good. Never wuz. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to "slick" her hair, and she hid the dish-towel and dish under her apron while she bowed to the lovely Ozma. Uncle Henry took off his straw hat and held it awkwardly ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... kind o' used to Steve a-handlin' of him, would do anything far him! And I've knowed that boy to swap far hosses 'at cou'dn't hardly make a shadder; and, afore you knowed it, Steve would have 'em a-cavortin' around a-lookin' as peert and fat and slick! ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... Uncle Eb. 'We want a slick coat, a kind uv a toppy head, an a lot O' ginger. So't when we hitch 'er t' the pole bime bye we ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... now and again on a cold winter's night, and, going ashore, I runs into a sort of fat, black lad about forty-five, half French, half English, that was a great trader there, named Miller. 'Twas off him I bought my keg of rum for old John Rose. I'd heard of this Miller before, and a slick, smooth one he was reported to be, with a warehouse on one of ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... brushes from their spines instead of their finger-tips—were slashed into and made mincemeat of or extolled to the skies. Then the "patty-pats," with their little dabs of yellow, blue, and red, in imitation of the master Monet; the "slick and slimies," and the "woollies"—the men who essayed the vague, mysterious, and obscure—were set up and knocked down one after the other, as is the custom with all groups of painters the world over when the never-ending ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... all well-bred, you could scarcely call them slick: Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick; And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and fair, They spent more time than a sailor should ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... "Slick as a whistle, I'll tell a man." She raised her voice to a shout as he disappeared through the outer door. "Kiss her ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... learn how we managed to run off with that slick little sloop that carried so neat a pack o' cases marked with ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... she know? How could she know that this slim, slick young garage mechanic was a woodland creature in disguise—a satyr in store clothes—a wild thing who perversely preferred to do his own pursuing? How could Miss Bauers know—she who cashiered in the Green Front ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... excited my curiosity some, Mr. Sheriff. Hurry in, Frank, and let's hear what happened after you left us. We just got home five minutes ago, and found the whole place upset. Those slick scoundrels worked a confidence game on my governor—left him in a stupor in his private office, after supper, with the door locked, and skipped out with his new car and some valuables, including negotiable stocks worth a good many ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... any paeans," said Hugh, "but several fellows were trying to chant proposals to her besides uncle E. Ginger! but you ought to see Elvira now, Miss Eulalie; she's all dimply and pink, and her hair isn't slick, like it used to be, though it isn't messy, either; it's kind of crimpled up high, some way, like you'd raveled out a brown silk dress and piled up the ravelings. She wears new kind of things, too—dresses with jig-saw ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... nigger," exclaimed Seth, "is allers shirking his work. I told him he warn't to come with us this mornin', and here he is toting arter us with some slick excuse or other. Hullo, you ugly cuss!" he added, hailing the darkey, who was running after the party and had now got close up, "what the dickens do yer ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... who had peopled it, and it was with New England that for many a year its whole social and commercial intercourse was carried on. It was no accident that Nova Scotia later produced the first Yankee humorist, "Sam Slick." ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... any one so hard. It's tough on them, but honest, Mr. Bruce, it ain't as tough to lose your coin as it is to lose your glad face. You can earn more money or slide along without so much; but once you get the slick, shamed look on your show window, you can't ever wash it off. Since your face is what your friends know you by, it's an awful pity ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... were busiest and I was stuffing the two and ones into cigar boxes and Andy was whistling 'No Wedding Bells for Her' a small slick man drops in and runs his eye over the walls like he was on the trail of a lost Gainesborough painting or two. As soon as I saw him I felt a glow of pride, because we were running our business on ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... too slick," he explained, raising one bare foot to the cushion beside him and picking a sliver out of his toe. "Her eyes ain't got their shutters raised. Eyes're like winders, but hers ye kain't see through. I don't know nuth'n' ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... polishing gemstones] lapidary. [person who polishes gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... through that blamed trap in the Mesa, like a comedian in an extravaganza, isn't the least unpleasant part of it. It was a pretty slick trick of Ramon's to find that out, although, I guess, some old Indian ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... horse. take advantage of, make the most of; profit by &e. (use) 677; make a hit &c. (succeed) 731; make a virtue of necessity; make hay while the sun shines &c. (occasion) 134. Adj. skillful, dexterous, adroit, expert, apt, handy, quick, deft, ready, gain; slick, smart &c. (active) 682; proficient, good at, up to, at home in, master of, a good hand at, au fait, thoroughbred, masterly, crack, accomplished; conversant &c. (knowing) 490. experienced, practiced, skilled, hackneyed; up in, well up in; in practice, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... lay in a slick, or "sleep," as some old whalemen pronounce the word, and hope revived in my troubled mind the instant I realized what the object was, and its condition. The waves were following me as hungrily as ever; at any moment the sloop might be overwhelmed. But once let me get the Wavecrest in the lee ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... the kitchen and withdrew. They heard her guttural utterance, and thereafter a young Indian boy, black of eyes, slick of plastered hair and snow-white of apron, came in bringing the soup. Howard nodded at him, saying a pleasant 'Que hay, Juanito?' The boy uncovered the rare whiteness of his splendid teeth in a quick smile. He began placing the soup. Helen ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... and I put to my shift for more. I commenced with horses, and ran several from the adjoining counties. I had got associated with a young man who had professed to be a preacher among the Methodists, and a sharper he was; he was as slick on the tongue as goose-grease. I took my first lessons in divinity from this young preacher. He was highly respected by all who knew him, and well calculated to please; he first put me in the notion of preaching, to aid ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... want it and I've got the poorest memory. Of course, now and then a party comes in and tries to get out of paying but the boys usually settle him and so I don't lose much that way. But the old woman wants me to do this slick and proper and her word goes. So Barney and ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... which has, of late, in many ways, been set before the public with too great liberality. The sole object seems to be to exhibit the "Yankee" character in its traditional deformities of stupidity and meanness,—otherwise denominated simplicity and shrewdness. Mr. Jonathan Slick is in no respect different from the ordinary fabulous Yankee. An illiterate clown he is, who, visiting New York, contrives by vice of impudence, to interfere very seriously with certain conventionalities of the metropolis. He overthrows, by his indomitable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... for Bart, too," Uncle Peabody shouted as he took down a bolt of soft blue cloth and laid it in my arms. "Now there's somethin' that's jest about as slick as a kitten's ear. Feel of it. It's for a suit o' clothes. Come all the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... different," said Lasky. "He'd be only too glad to soak you; for you've always been too slick to get nicked before. Orders is out to get you, and if I were you I'd beat it and beat it quick. I don't have to tell you why I'm handing you this, but it's all I can do for you. Now take my advice and make yourself scarce, though ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... breakfast, the hotel man glancing from the window exclaimed, "Here he is now!" and Josh peered forth to see in the light of sunrise something he had often heard of, but never before seen, a coal-black Fox, a giant among his kind. How slick and elegant his glossy fur, how slim his legs, and what a monstrous bushy tail; and the other Foxes moved aside as the patrician rushed in impatient haste to seize the food thrown ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Heard tell as how there's a custom of the country that a slick this old can be branded and claimed by anyone bringing him in. I wasn't going to lose him that way should he do ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... up and grimaced and said he had known Mr. Tutt all his professional life and he was a peach, but they mustn't believe what he said or let him put anythin' over on 'em, for he was pretty slick even if he was a fine old feller. Now the plain fact was, as they all knew perfectly well, that this old boy had been caught with the goods. It might be tough luck, but the law was the law and they were all there to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... work again an' practice them lessons till I earnt some more. But I ain't never goin' to pinch marm; she worked an' slaved an' picked huckleberries and went out nussin' and tailorin' an' any work she could git, slick or rough, an' give me everything she could till I got a little schoolin' together and was big enough to work. She's kind o' slim now; I think she worked too hard. I was awful homesick when I was first to your aunts', but Jonathan he used me real ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a town 'Frisco must be!" Kit soliloquized. "Must have more'n a hundred saloons an' more slick gals than the X brand has heifers. What a lot o' fun a feller could have out thar! Only I reckon them gals wouldn't look at him more'n about onct unless he was well fixed for dough. Reckon they don't drink nothin' but wine out thar, nor eat nothin' but oysters. An' wine an' oysters ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... no doubt the fellow has a slick tongue in his mouth, and can spin stories that haven't a particle of foundation except in his brain. He's no ignoramus, that's sure, and if he hasn't traveled in all those countries he's read about the same, and can talk everlastingly about things ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... En, child, when dey would iron dat dress, it would stand up in de floor just like dere been somebody in it. When I say iron, I talkin bout de people would iron den, too. Yes, mam, when I come along, de people been take time to iron dey garments right. Oh, dey clothes would be just as slick as glass. Won' a wrinkle nowhe' bout dem. Another thing, dey used to have dese dove colored linen dusters dat dey would wear over dey dress when dey would ride to church. Den when dey went in de church, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... to you. All that red you used on your hair before has not disappeared yet; but you had better go to a hair dyer's and get it fixed up over again. Then make yourself over once more into Pat Slick. I leave the rest to you. But as a last warning, I repeat—look out ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... you need not be particular with; but this pair is mine, and I want 'em polished up high,—now mind, I tell you. I'm going to wear a new pair of pants to meetin' to-morrow, and I expect to cut a dash, so you'll do 'em up slick, now ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and hard-faced dock wallopers and slick-haired lounge lizards and broken-hearted ones—twenty a day they sidle up to Madge's counter, where the love me, love me songs razz the heavy air, and shoot a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Baizley. "That's a good un! You done that slick! An' the old fellow b'lieved yer, too! Couldn't 'a lied out'n it ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thickness of about an inch, and are afterwards fitted to the boat with the same exactness that would be expected from an expert joiner. To fasten these planks together, holes are bored with a piece of bone that is fixed into a slick for that purpose, a use to which our nails were afterwards applied with great advantage, and through these holes a kind of plaited cordage is passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together: The seams are caulked with dried rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel is paid with a gummy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... away now; and the future explorer will not concern himself with it. He will ask, what was the secret of Amundsen's slick success? What is the moral of our troubles and losses? I will take Amundsen's success first. Undoubtedly the very remarkable qualities of the man himself had a good deal to do with it. There is a sort of sagacity that constitutes ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... clap on the check—quite friendly, you may say; and before he can square to it, the slim one he steps his hind leg half a foot back, and he drives a straight left like lightning off the shoulder slick on to t' other one's nob, and over he rolls, like a cart with the shafts up down a bank; and he' a been washing his 'chops' and threatening bullets ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you pay for it later with your own property. [After a brief silence] It's better not to have dealings with provincials: always on credit, always on credit; and if he ever does bring the money, it's in slick small change—you look, and there's neither head nor tail to the coins, and the denomination's rubbed off long ago. But do as you please here! You'd better not show your goods to the tradesman of this place; any one ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... spin de plate. Ever time I think on dat game it gives me de shivers. One time there was a strange young man come to a party where I was. Said he name Richard Green, an he been takin keer o' horses for a rich man what was gonna buy a plantation in dat county. He look kinda slick an dressed-up—diffunt from de rest. All de gals begin to cast sheep's eyes at him, an hope he gonna choose dem when ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... isn't your father grumbling about expense, it's the kids, or that stupid housekeeper, or that slick Aleck, Nicholls, with his cowardly lies. Which ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... flesh, my skin waxed soft, my haire began to shine, and was gallant on every part, but such faire and comely shape of my body, was cause of my dishonour, for the Baker and Cooke marvelled to see me so slick and fine, considering I did eate no hay at all. Wherefore on a time at their accustomed houre, they went to the baines, and locked their chamber doore. It fortuned that ere they departed away, they espyed me through a hole, how I fell roundly to my victuals: then they marvelled greatly, and little ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... the nail square on the head!" he exclaimed admiringly. "Them's my own opinions to a T. I've told the boys so a hunderd times, but they can't git it. Wasn't Ol' Swal-lertail hand-in-glove wi' that slick Mister Joselyn, who they say has run away an' left his pore wife in the lurch? That's how you got a chance to rent the Kenton house. Joselyn were slick as butter, an' high-strung. Wouldn't hobnob with any o' us but Ol' Swallertail, ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... to the sheriff now," he urged. "The scoundrel is gone, and it would make a nine days' hooray, and nothing would come of it. He was darned slick to take the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... different places. Say, I seen some great vaudeville in Liverpool, Charley, with Morton—he's a slick fellow; works for the Pennsylvania, here in town. I got to look him up. Say, I wish we had an agency for college sofa-pillows and banners and souvenir stuff in Oxford. There's a whole bunch of colleges there, all right in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... "Yup, that is, he's a breed. They say his gran'mother was a Cree squaw—daughter of a chief, or somethin'. Anyways, this here Monk, he's a pretty slick article, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... something like. Shall be much charmed to see the little schoolma'am again. She's a slick little girl—at least she used to be. In my opinion she's wasting her time up here in the woods. Why, that girl's got ability, and I call it a shame for her to bury herself in the country just for her mother's account. But say, isn't that ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... man's part in Toledo ..., True it is, by your cunning villainies you have deprived us of our just rights, of our own property.... Thanks be to an all wise and provident God that, my father has more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat; and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest, and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own property, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... one slick and black, though with streaks of gray, the other shaggy, colorless, and unkempt, came together and a growl of hoarse and carefully guarded whispers murmured at that end of the bar. After ten minutes' talk, Snake went to the safe ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... it," Uncle Henry said. "Let him try. He's done swell so far. Personally, I got a lot o' confidence in that feller. He's slick, he is!" ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... moment to introduce quite simply, the subject of the Genuine Mouldform Garments like the pixtures in the magazines, $15, rejuiced from as high as $28.50, and would look, oh, so fine and stylish long after the Prince serge had worn slick ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... advising tongue, but because he was possessed of a certain amount of raw, psychological instinct and knew his Shakespeare and could quote from Young's "Night Thoughts." Arthur had something of a fishy look and a slick way with him; but ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... by the excessive confidence with which Mr. James Smith predicted that he would treat me as Zephaniah Stockdolloger (Sam Slick calls it slockdollager) treated Goliah Quagg. He has announced his {131} intention of bringing me, with a contrite heart, and clean shaved,—4159265... razored down to 25,—to a camp-meeting of circle-squarers. But there is this difference: Zephaniah only wanted to pass the Colonel's smithy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... jest in time to look and see a whale rise I'll 'low twenty foot clean out of the water. Then there was a kind of a rush, and Sam and me went down, and when we riz it was gone. The critter had hopped clean over that bot as slick as nothing. That kinder tuck the peartness aout of us, so to speak; but later in the day I got aout the gun ag'in, havin' broke the lance, and in killin' the critter she jumped on the bot, and—wall, Sam and me we lit aout, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... threatened her with staying at home. After supper the big brothers hitched the gray team to the light wagon, fastened up the chicken-coops, latched the barn door and chained the dogs; and, having finished the chores, blacked each other's boots, brushed their hair slick with water, changed their clothes and resigned themselves to their mother, who put the last touches to their collars and ties. Then, just as a faint bugle-call, sounding the advance, was heard from across the prairie to the west, the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... basket, she'd say, 'Bring on de milk, and less feed dese chullun.' A big bucket o' milk would be brung and po'd in little troughs and de'd lay down on dey little stommacks, and eat jest lak pigs! But de wuz jest as slick and fat as yer please—lots fatter an us is now! And clean too. Old Mustus would say, 'Mammy, you scrub dese chillun and use dat "Jim-Crow."' Lawd, chile! I done fergot you doan know what a "Jim-Crow" wus—dat's a little fine com' what'll jest natchully take the skin plum off ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration |
