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Insinuating   /ɪnsˈɪnjueɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Insinuating

adjective
1.
Calculated to please or gain favor.  Synonyms: ingratiating, ingratiatory.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Insinuating" Quotes from Famous Books



... lets his feelings have too much weight and prominence against his calmer reason! I can easily understand how, with his tastes and leanings, the clericals should have managed to get a hold over him. The clericals are such insinuating cunning fellows. A very impressionable boy Artie was, always; the poetical temperament and the artistic temperament always is impressionable, I suppose; but shoemaking certainly does develop the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the naturalness of her manner toward him, and by her matter-of-fact, impersonal consideration of his perplexing situation, had brought to his unsettled and chaotic mind a sense of stability and order; and by subtly insinuating her own practical decisions as to the course he should follow, had made herself a very literal part of his inner life. In fact, Betty Jo knew Brian Kent more intimately at the close of their first meeting than she could have known ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... picturesque, though they were desolate to the last degree, being mere piles of black and broken rocks, without trees or vegetation of any kind. As we passed among them along a wide valley, I noticed Raymond riding by the side of a younger squaw, to whom he was addressing various insinuating compliments. All the old squaws in the neighborhood watched his proceedings in great admiration, and the girl herself would turn aside her head and laugh. Just then the old mule thought proper to display her vicious pranks; she began to rear ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... of the Lens.—This is performed by insinuating a sharp curved needle under the corneal flap, avoiding the iris, and then tearing up the anterior capsule through the dilated pupil, the chief point to be attended to being that the capsule be lacerated ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... Mr. "Bobby" Spencer gracefully tripping about, note-book in hand, holding an interminable succession of members in brief but animated conversation. He is not making a book for the Derby or Goodwood, as one might suspect. "Do you dine here to-night?" is his insinuating inquiry, and till he has listed more than enough men to "make a House" in case of need, he does not feel assured of the safety of the British Constitution, and therefore ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down; everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very often of very bad philosophy, scattered fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable theological science, are insinuating themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... nothing, but I waited. And then one night the feeling overcame me. I was in the Hudson's Bay store when an Indian came in from the north with a large pack of buckskin. As they unrolled it a dash of its insinuating odor filled the store. I went over and leaned above the skins a second, then buried my face in them, swallowing, drinking the fragrance of them, that went to my head like wine. Oh, the wild wonder ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... for guide, Claire discovered a Christianity that was not of candles and shifting lights and insinuating music, nor of carpets and large pews and sound oratory, but of hoboes blinking in rows, and girls in gospel bonnets, and little silver and crimson placards of Bible texts. They stopped on a corner to listen to a Pentecostal brother, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... spoils of the vanquished.—Of twelve, which originally composed the Committee of Public Welfare, seven only remained; yet no one ventured to suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of "saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up the vacancies ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... project too premature and predicting great social cataclysms. No less celebrated was his opposition to a sentimental serenade that some wished to tender a certain governor on the eve of his departure. Don Custodio, who felt a little resentment over some slight or other, succeeded in insinuating the idea that the rising star was the mortal enemy of the setting one, whereat the frightened promoters of the serenade gave ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... always disappeared when light came into the room; that he had often struck at it, but could discover nothing solid. Gassendi, as a natural philosopher, endeavoured to account for it; sometimes attributing it to some defect of vision, or to some dampness of the room, insinuating that perhaps it might be sent from Heaven to him, to give him a warning in due time of something that should happen. The spectre still continued its visits all the time that he staid at Marseilles; and some years afterwards, on their ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... Indies. By the same ship, Albornos sent home accusations against Cortes; charging him with the levy of exorbitant contributions in gold for his own use; fortifying castles to defend himself, and marrying his private soldiers to the daughters of the native lords: insinuating that Cortes was endeavouring to set himself up as an independent king, and that it was highly necessary to send out an able officer with a great force to supersede him. The bishop of Burgos laid these letters before the whole junto of the enemies of Cortes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy. Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... it should be so difficult, the idea did not affright you when we first talked of it. You voluntarily accepted the proposal, made your bargain, promised to stick to it, and here after three days you are trying to break out, and are insinuating that the circumstances are too horrible for you to continue bearing it. Surely your reason and common sense must tell you that your behaviour ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... paused, and then added, mair sternly, "If I understand your trick, sir, you want to take advantage of some malicious reports concerning things in this family, and particularly respecting my father's sudden death, thereby to cheat me out of the money, and perhaps take away my character, by insinuating that I have received the rent I am demanding.—Where do you suppose this money to be?—I insist ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... coldly, "is a dangerous man; I have never met anybody so insinuating and plausible. When he speaks to you, it's very hard to ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... characteristic is tenderness and pathos, combined with unity of feeling, and a simplicity always genuine and true to nature. Allan Cunningham, who forms only a humble estimate of his genius, remarks that his songs "have much softness and truth, an insinuating grace of manners, and a decorum of expression, with no small skill in the dramatic management of the stories."[11] The ballad of "Scotland's Skaith" ranks among the happiest conceptions of the Scottish Doric muse; rural life is depicted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... slyly up into Paul's face and winked. Perceiving no response to that insinuating communication, his wrinkled face became more ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... menial task of hanging pictures and decorating in various ways. As eastern sovereigns built their palaces and adorned their cities by the labors of those whom the fortunes of war threw into their hands, so your skill and taste shall be useful to me; and I, your head task-mistress," she added, with her insinuating smile, "will be ever present to see that there is no idling, nothing but monotonous toil. Had you not better have stood longer in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... round the circular annexe, more live fish than I had ever seen in three of the largest aquariums known in England, had they been combined into one. There were some large fellows, something like pollack, cruising around, and these are called buffaloes. Insinuating their slow course through the crowd were fresh-water gar-fish with long spike noses. The catfish, with its greasy chubby body, portmanteau mouth, and prominent wattles, were precisely like those we used to catch (and eat sometimes) in Australia. Carp ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... Pappleworth, in that insinuating voice which means, "He's only one of your good little sops who ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... solely to take small birds that De Luynes aspired when he thus found himself the chosen companion of the Dauphin; he had other talents which he exerted so zealously that he ere long made himself indispensable. Gifted with a magnificent person, insinuating manners, and that ready tact by which an indolent nature is unconsciously roused to excitement, he soon obtained an extraordinary influence over his royal playmate by the power which he possessed of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... calls himself a promoter. He has made sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... natural kindness of disposition and strong sense of comradeship helped his powers of observation. He changed his tone to a most insinuating softness, and, gazing at the hussar's breeches hanging over the arm of the girl, he appealed to the interest she took in Lieut. Feraud's comfort and happiness. He was pressing and persuasive. He used ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... surpassing this. One of her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before we ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... the confraternity. The sentimental old maid is a commonplace of the novelists; and he must be rather a poor sort of human being, to be sure, who can look on at this pretty madness without indulgence and sympathy. For nature commends itself to people with a most insinuating art; the busiest is now and again arrested by a great sunset; and you may be as pacific or as cold-blooded as you will, but you cannot help some emotion when you read of well-disputed battles, or meet a pair of lovers ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... join you in a little light repast?" said an insinuating voice behind them, and turning around, they beheld the Dodo smoothing ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... shivered slightly at the blows of the fresh April wind. The big windows of the reception-room admitted broad bands of sunlight. The lake dazzled beneath in gorgeous green and blue shades. Spring had bustled into town from the prairies, insinuating itself into the dirty, cavernous streets, sailing in boisterously over the gleaming lake, eddying in steam wreaths about the lofty buildings. The subtle monitions of the air permeated the atmosphere of antiseptics in the office, and whipped the turbulent spirits ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the same old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct Baronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine years before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whom she refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in his coat on the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman and talked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the coach ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... self-possessed, and ready—your English notions of gentlemanly. But none of your men treat a woman as a woman. We are either angels, or good fellows, or heaven knows what that is bad. No exquisite delicacy, no insinuating softness, mixed with respect, none of that hovering over the border, as Papa used to say, none of that happy indefiniteness of manner which seems to declare "I would love you if I might," or "I do, but I dare not tell," even when engaged in the most trivial attentions—handing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Gloucester, the youngest child of Charles L, born July 6th, 16—, who, with his sister Elizabeth, was allowed a meeting with his father on the night before the King's execution. Burnet says: "He was active, and loved business; was apt to have particular friendships, and had an insinuating temper which was generally very acceptable. The King loved him much better than the Duke of York." He died of smallpox at Whitehall, September 13th, 1660, and was buried ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... it, with its new magic, the miracles of Oriental dreams and fables;—the other, under its veil of wildness and spontaneity, under its thick-woven veil of mirth and beauty, with its inducted precepts and dispersed directions, insinuating itself into all our practice, winding itself into every department of human affairs; speaking from the legislator's lips, at the bar, from the pulpit,—putting in its word every where, always at ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterward he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... yourself, and are a man again. The deuce take your music if you can put it to no better use than to cozen sentimental young women out of their quiet peace of mind." "But," I began, interrupting the old gentleman, "but have I ever thought of insinuating myself as the Baroness's lover?" "You puppy!" cried the old gentleman, "if I thought so I would pitch you out of this window." At this juncture the Baron entered, and put an end to the painful conversation; and the business to which I now had to turn my attention ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... an insinuating fashion, which made Ralston disinclined to strike a bargain—and he nodded his head like one who wishes to convey that he could tell much if only he would. But Ralston paused before he answered, and when he answered it was only to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... and swishing rain keep on. We are to a certain extent sheltered from the former, but the latter is of that insinuating sort that nothing but a granite wall would ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... for the third time to Montreal, where, instead of aid, he found a lawsuit. "In spite," he says, "of the derangement of my affairs, the envy and jealousy of various persons impelled them to write letters to the court insinuating that I thought of nothing but making my fortune. If more than forty thousand livres of debt which I have on my shoulders are an advantage, then I can flatter myself that I am very rich. In all my misfortunes, I have the consolation of seeing that M. de Beauharnois enters into my views, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... strength: and yet this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens, and threatens to tear the world from off its hinges; who, more terrible than AEschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at the same time, the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He plays with love like a child; and his songs are breathed out like melting sighs. He unites in his genius the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most foreign, and even apparently ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Bertrand, amiable, witty, insinuating, united the agreeable and polished manners of a courtier with an air of distinction. Feeble, irresolute, in the ordinary conduct of life; he yielded to no one in courage and firmness, on occasions of difficulty ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... faculties; it is readily embraced, no animosity withstanding or obstructing it. It is the sweetness of the lips, which, as the wise man telleth us, increaseth learning; disposing a man to hear lessons of good doctrine, rendering him capable to understand them, insinuating and impressing them upon the mind; the affections being thereby unlocked, the passage ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... have walked than he could have flown. Mr. Belcher saw the impression he had made upon him, and became soft and insinuating in his manner. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... king kept agents in all the Somme towns, insinuating opposition to the duke, and reminding the citizens that they were French at heart. His ambassadors passed in and out of the Burgundian court, saying many things in secret besides those they said in public. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to shore—a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat—a homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterwards he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to himself softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... the ladies, sir, as has some friend she'd like to put up a memorial to," said Mr Elsworthy, in insinuating tones. "A window is a deal cheerfuller a memorial than a tombstone, and it couldn't be described the improvement it would be to the church. I'm sorry to hear Mr Wodehouse aint quite so well as his usual to-night; a useful man like ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... was installed, General Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, agent of the Bank, visited the town to supervise the arrangements and became very friendly with the "lord of the Hermitage." But correspondence of succeeding years, though filled with insinuating cordiality, failed to bring out any expression of goodwill toward the institution such as the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... in the mere sound of articulated breath; of consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... He began insinuating his hand under his coat, and groped for the only weapon on which he could now rely. In his eagerness he stepped more softly and slightly crouched, as one is apt to do at such ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... Doctor! And that homely, cheery, daring sentence gives the keynote of much of the Revolutionary writing that has survived. It may be heard in the state papers of Samuel Adams, the oratory of Patrick Henry, the pamphlets of Thomas Paine, the satires of Freneau and Trumbull, and in the subtle, insinuating, thrilling paragraphs of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... shawl lightly protecting their fair shoulders. Dona Mercedes looks charming in a pink grenadine dress, and with her luxuriant black hair tastefully arranged, as a Cuban Senora alone knows how. Each lady adopts her most insinuating manner in order to dispose of her twisted tickets, the greater portion of which contain, of course, blanks, or a consolatory couplet, like a motto in a cracker, for the gratification of the unsuccessful purchaser. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... approaching and final crisis. No uplift of her spirit came this time—no intimations—no whisperings. How horrible it all was! To long to be good and noble—to realize that she was neither—to sink lower day by day! Must she decay there like one of these rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use? What did it matter? Who would ever think of Ellen Jorth? "O God!" she whispered in her distraction, "is there nothing ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... chance at home. Father was so busy, and we were so little; but she'd learn. Mother Carey can learn anything, if one could hinder her Serene Highness from pitching into her. I say, Miss Ogilvie, you'll give her leave to skate, won't you?" he asked in an insinuating tone. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his fur coat fastened, came up at that moment, saying gallant things, and insinuating that we must meet again, but I said good-night quietly, and came up the stairs without a word more to ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... too." It was, in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it almost insinuating. He lacked only time for full persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment why. Meantime, however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a sharp ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... am glad to be rid of the fellow," observed Rhymer, as he was seated at the head of the table in the midshipmen's berth. "Like all Arabs, I have no doubt that he is a great rascal, though he is so soft and insinuating in his manners." ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... talked a great deal about Imogen, so much that he came to suspect her of adjusting the conversation to some supposed craving in himself. She had never asked a question about his relations with her daughter, accepting merely with interest any signs they might choose to give her, but insinuating no hint of an appeal for more than they might choose to give. She probably took for granted what was the truth of the situation, that it rested with Imogen to make it a definite one. She did not treat him as an accepted lover, nor yet as a rejected one; she discriminated with the nicest ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... Montholon. But all this appears to have been set down, from the beginning, exactly for what it was worth. He who had chosen to outlive Krasnoi, and Leipzig, and Montmartre, and Waterloo, was not likely to die by his own hand in the Bellerophon. We desire not to be considered as insinuating, according to the custom of many, that Napoleon ought to have rushed voluntarily on some English bayonet, when the fate of the 18th of June could no longer be doubtful. Laying all religious and moral obligations ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... were bad to the core. A Seriff is supposed to be a descendant of the Prophet Mahomet, at any rate he is an Arab, and Messahore was said to be invulnerable and sacred in his person. He was a fine, handsome creature, with insinuating manners, but there was nothing more to say in his favour. He was at the bottom of every disturbance in the country, but was cunning enough to keep himself in the background. Directly a plot miscarried, he came forward zealously ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... come, nevertheless, a kind of mist over the subject, which gave those who chose to talk unpleasantly an opportunity of insinuating suspicions, though they could not themselves find the clue of the mystery. In the first place, it appeared that he had gone to bed very tipsy, and that he was heard sing ing and noisy in his room ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... have got something else to do; and he'd think everything his wife did was the best in the world; and if he had somebody to take care of him he'd make money. I don't suppose YOU would think of it?" This last in an insinuating tone, with evident anxiety. ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... there was little hope of their return from Vienna. These various enactments were well calculated to serve Napoleon's cause. They flattered the army, and at the same time stimulated their resentment against the emigrants, by insinuating that they had been sacrificed by Louis to the interest of his followers. They held out to the Republicans a prospect of confiscation, proscription, and, revolution of government, while, the Imperialists ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... reconciled to God, 2 Cor. v. 14, 19, 20. As if we could do him a favour and benefit, he requests us most earnestly. Truly it is strange that this doth not melt the heart, and make it fall down into the belief and obedience of the truth. Affection is the most insinuating and prevailing thing with an ingenuous spirit, most of all when it is accompanied with majesty in the person that hath it, and humility in the carriage and disposition. For a great personage to descend out of love, to affectionate and humble requests and solicitations, this cannot but have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... its pathetic appeals, its insinuating style, and its deep-toned piety, commend it to the candid attention of ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... before the doors were open, the little back street was filled with a fashionable mob, including ladies of the highest rank. An admission by noble non-subscribers with notes, gold, and cheques in hands, was begged for with a polite insinuating humility that was quite edifying. A hatful of ten-guinea subscriptions was thrust upon the unwilling secretary at the door with as much eagerness as if he had been the allotter of shares in a ten per cent railway in the day of Hudsonian ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... that Steele here says about Addison he had said publicly and quite as emphatically before, as Tickell had recorded. As Steele had, in Tickell's own words, given to Addison 'the honour of the most applauded pieces,' it is absurd to accuse Tickell of insinuating that Addison wished his papers to be marked because he was afraid Steele would assume the credit of these pieces. In one important particular he flatly contradicts himself. At the beginning he asks 'whether it was a decent and reasonable thing that works written, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... that Society was the apple of his eye, and that its claims were paramount to every other consideration. Treasury moved on, and Bar came up. Bar, with his little insinuating jury droop, and fingering his persuasive double eye-glass, hoped he might be excused if he mentioned to one of the greatest converters of the root of all evil into the root of all good, who had for a long time reflected a shining lustre on the annals even of our commercial country—if he mentioned, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Nominally five hundred." Mr. Bucket has his hand on the bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating tone. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... all the foregoing, at the same time the British cabinet answered the King of Spain in the terms already mentioned, they were insinuating themselves at the court of France by means of secret emissaries, and making very great offers to her, to abandon the colonies and make peace with England. But there is yet more; for at this same time the English ministry were treating, by means of another certain ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... evening I read the treatise by Nicole so much admired by Mme. de Sevigne: "Des moyens de conserver la paix avec les hommes." Wisdom so gentle and so insinuating, so shrewd, piercing, and yet humble, which divines so well the hidden thoughts and secrets of the heart, and brings them all into the sacred bondage of love to God and man, how good and delightful a thing it is! Everything in it is smooth, even well put together, well thought out, but no ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert patron and champion. The sin that is the devil's chief stock in trade is not what is going on in Hester Street, but on the polite avenues. . . . Evangelization conducts ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to be done. He employed every device to gain time. He had interviews with men of various parties. He grew more and more care-worn and aged. His troubles showed themselves in his carriage and his face. "By turns he was insinuating, eloquent, lively, pathetic. He showed a suppleness and a tenacity of purpose that amazed those brought into contact with him. If he could but gain time, he hoped that the Republicans would disagree about his successor, and decide ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... also stuck to public affairs more vigorously, himself keeping at no great distance from Italy, and continually sending his soldiers to the city to attend the elections, and with money insinuating himself into the favour of many of the magistrates and corrupting them; among whom was Paulus[337] the consul who changed sides for fifteen hundred talents, and Curio[338] the tribune who was released by Caesar ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... be coming on, Miss Deb," was Master Cheese's insinuating reply. "And there's always apples, you know. With plenty of lemon and a clove or two, apples make as good a pudding ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... must have understood. At any rate, he acted upon it to the best of his ability, following the party at a discreet distance through the garden and down the road towards the lake; and only when the halt at the pier came, did he venture near, the most insinuating of dogs. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs

... of ocean. It was one that few complexions could have borne, but their connoisseur, with one glance from it to her fresh cheek, owned her right, though much depended on the garniture, and he again brought forward his beloved lilac, insinuating that he should regard her selection of it as a personal attention. No; she laughed, and said she had made up her mind and would not change; and while he was presiding over Honora's black lace, she was beforehand with him, and her bill was being made out for her white muslin worked ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and Difference, what would he think of the Divine World, in, or concerning which we cannot justly say, all nor some, nor express any thing belonging to it by such Words as our Ears are us'd to, without insinuating some Notion which is contrary to the Truth of the thing, which no Man knows but he that has seen it, nor understands; but he that has ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... darkness Harlan's smile seemed to hold an evil significance; it seemed to express a thought that took into consideration the loneliness of the surroundings, the fact that she was alone, and that she was helpless. More—it seemed to be a presumptuous smile, insinuating, full of ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... last words in a tone half insinuating, half ironical. Prescott flushed a deep red. He did love Helen Harley; he had always loved her. He had not been away from her so much recently because of any decrease in that love; it was his misfortune—the pressure of ugly affairs that compelled him. Was the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... barely passed the gate when another boy came shuffling along—a tall, raw-boned lad, with an insinuating smile and shifty, cunning eyes. The newcomer nodded familiarly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... evasively. "She has her fast now, at any rate. To think of that loud independence of Mattie's being only a subtler form of snobbishness! Bertha can already make her believe anything she pleases—and I'm afraid she's begun, my poor child, by insinuating horrors about you." ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... young colored boy who had lighted Fanny's fire on the first day of her arrival at Place-du-Bois, and who had made such insinuating advances of friendliness towards her, had continued to attract her notice and good will. He it was who lighted her fires on such mornings as they were needed. For there had been no winter. In mid-January, the grass was fresh and green; trees and ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... rewards, that one can hardly tell what there is in it, after all, which can be worth rewarding. For to be bribed only or terrified into an honest practice, bespeaks little of real honesty or worth." "If," he says elsewhere, insinuating what he dare not speak out, "if through hope merely of reward, or fear of punishment, the creature be inclined to do the good he hates, or restrained from doing the ill to which he is not otherwise in the least degree ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... and bowed repeatedly with a grimacing smile. The music, usually Viennese, was muted and emotional; its strains blended perfectly with the floating scents of the women and the faintly perceptible pungent odors of dinner. Every little while a specially insinuating melody became, apparently, tangled in the women's breathing, and their breasts, cunningly traced and caressed in tulle, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up his quarters for the season under the haymow. There is no such word as hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if a fence crosses his course, steers for a break or opening to avoid climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropriates that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... remarks that this custom proceeds doubtless from the Church of Rome, which had communicated it to the English; and the Reverend Father Menard[498] maintains that it is not this practice which is condemned by the above-mentioned Councils, but that of giving the communion to the dead by insinuating the holy wafer into their mouths. However it may be regarding this practice, we know that Cardinal Humbert,[499] in his reply to the of the patriarch Michael Cerularius, reproves the Greeks for burying the Host, when there remained ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... understand the nature of mercy, nor what is an object thereof; but when he thanks God, he praises himself: when he pleads for mercy, he means his own merit; and all this is manifest from what doth follow; for, saith he, I am not as this Publican: thence clearly insinuating, that not the good, but the bad, should be rejected of the God of heaven: that not the bad but the good, not the sinner, but the self-righteous, are the most proper objects of God's favour. The same thing ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... then wait it is, but I don't like that Jerry idea. What sounds more devilish than 'Cousin Jerry.' Sort of an insinuating, raspberry jam sound. But I'll wait. Go on ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... villas, yielded luxuriant crops to the inhabitants, and the figure should show that people lived there before the creation of the world. I recoil with horror at the mere idea of being even suspected of insinuating such ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... said Thuillier; "what are you insinuating? Didn't you settle everything with Brigitte the other day? You take a pretty time to come and talk to me about your love-affairs, when the sword of justice is ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... of nothing, but of breaking the law," said Williams, quickly. Then he added in an insinuating tone: "But I tell them, ladies don't stop long in country visits, not at this time of the year. And a thing can be put up with for short that any man'd kick at for long. Madame the Countess will be moving on to pay her other visits, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... one Hwan Tuy, held the roads against him, accusing him of "a proud air and many desires; an insinuating habit and a wild will." From this time on he was subject to persecution. The "insinuating habit" reminds one of an old parrot-cry one has heard: "She hypnotizes them." He turned westward from this opposition, and visited one state, and then another; in neither was there any disposition ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... The General, in a soft, insinuating voice. "You're pretty slick with the toad stabber, an' any way one more or ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of hope. From early childhood parents and friends are hypnotizing the child into beliefs and unbeliefs, and too often they are exiling all nobility out of life, all confidence, all trust, all hope; they are insinuating a mean self-seeking, a self-mistrust, a vulgar spirit which laughs at every high ideal, until at last the hypnotized child is blinded to the presence of any beauty or nobility in life. No country can ever hope to rise beyond a vulgar mediocrity ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... Morphew's "Tatler" for January 13th, 1710 (No. 276), contains the following: "Whereas an advertisement was yesterday delivered out by the author of the late 'Female Tatler,' insinuating, [according to his custom] that he is Isaac Bickerstaff Esq.; This is to give notice, that this paper is continued to be sold by John Morphew as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... just an he was falling asleep, a remembrance of the insinuating perfume returned to him. He wondered whose cheque it was, and regretted not having looked at the signature, and many times during the succeeding weeks he paused as he was making entries in the ledger to think if the haunting perfume were rose, lavender, or mignonette. It was not the scent ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... House and a Red Cross flag is hung from the steeple. Any shell holes in the roofs and walls are stopped with sections of tenting. As we approached Clamanges, we detected a sickening, subtle, sweetish odor which crept stealthily to us through the air and filled us with an insinuating disgust. The Colonel said ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... Lord Lindesay, at the head of the party, was an absolute contrast to him, in manner, form, and features. His thin and silky hair was already white, though he seemed not above forty-five or fifty years old. His tone of voice was soft and insinuating—his form thin, spare, and bent by an habitual stoop— his pale cheek was expressive of shrewdness and intelligence—his eye was quick though placid, and his whole demeanour mild and conciliatory. He rode an ambling nag, such as were used by ladies, clergymen, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... conception was abhorrent to Shelley, both because poetry ought not to do what can be done better by prose, and also because, for him, the pleasure and the lesson were indistinguishably one. The poet is to improve us, not by insinuating a moral, but by communicating to others something of that ecstasy with which he himself burns in contemplating eternal ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... footfalls, lest the grown people should be disturbed. There was the mystic retreat within the circle of a group of low-branching pines, the secret of which one penetrated by stepping down from the front piazza at a certain place and there insinuating one's self into a small opening, which only the initiated could discover, among the trees. Here one had a little fragrant sanctum all one's own, carpeted with pine needles, green and brown, and arched over by ceiling and walls of thick branches, from out of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... watched her with no little distrust. The admirers of blonde beauties would, however, have fallen in love with a poodle, with the finest head of hair imaginable, and most voluptuous shoulders. This brilliant band began barking in the most insinuating tone on the appearance of the Queen; and Manto, who was almost as dexterous a linguist as Tiresias himself, informed her Majesty that these were the ladies of her bed-chamber; upon which Proserpine, who, it will be remembered had ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli

... studios we say croquer, craunch, nibble, for sketching," interposed Mistigris, with an insinuating air, "and we are always wanting to croquer beautiful heads. That's the origin of the expression, 'She ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... caught this question, she was at once inclined to tell him all about the charge to be entrusted to him, but on second thought, she again felt apprehensive lest she should be looked lightly upon by him, by simply insinuating that she had promptly and needlessly promised him something to do, so soon as she got a little scented ware; and this consideration urged her to once more restrain her tongue, so that she never made the slightest reference even to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... sculpture confined to low-relief. Every rift in the surface catches his eye, and the deeper and more intricate the recess, the more curiously his insinuating fancy explores it. Sordello's palace is "a maze of corridors,"—"dusk winding stairs, dim galleries." He probes the depths of the flower-bell; he pries after the warmth and scent that lie within the "loaded curls" of his lady, and irradiates ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... of the night when even West Ketchem arose and poured this festive, fluttering stuff down necks and into windows. Someone who had thought to throw the search-light on the flag across the street, had spilled some of insinuating stuff in the little cupola. How old and stale, and a part of the forgotten past, the war seemed! And these once gay memorials of its ending were all washed out and as colorless as the big spiders that claimed the little cupola as their own. It smelled musty up there. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... replied Cancha in a more insinuating voice, "in this court there is a young cavalier who might by virtue of respect, love, and devotion have made you forget the claims of this foreigner, alike unworthy to be our king and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... to make themselves welcome, and to gather up the crumbs; but have patience, have patience; our God is a jealous God, and one fine day He will be avenged upon them!" she would declaim, with the sidelong, insinuating glance of Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust



Words linked to "Insinuating" :   ingratiatory, ingratiating, flattering



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