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Roundabout   /rˈaʊndəbˌaʊt/   Listen
Roundabout

adjective
1.
Marked by obliqueness or indirection in speech or conduct.  Synonym: circuitous.  "A roundabout paragraph" , "Hear in a roundabout way that her ex-husband was marrying her best friend"
2.
Deviating from a straight course.  Synonyms: circuitous, devious.  "A long and circuitous journey by train and boat" , "A roundabout route avoided rush-hour traffic"



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"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books



... grave eyes were always wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet, who was romantic and openly now wrote poems for the Observer, and who looked at Chad with no attempt to conceal her admiration of his appearance and her wonder as to who he was. And there were the neighbors roundabout—the Talbotts, Quisenberrys, Clays, Prestons, Morgans—surely no less than forty strong, and all for dinner. It was no little trial for Chad in that crowd of fine ladies, judges, soldiers, lawyers, statesmen—but he stood it well. While his self-consciousness made him awkward, he had pronounced ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... correspondence I conducted that winter was by roundabout methods. I occasionally wrote my brother that I was wallowing in wealth, always inclosing a letter to Gertrude Edwards with instructions to remail, conveying the idea to her family that I was spending the winter with relatives in Missouri. As yet there was no ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... for I have tried it, and I never yet found a Principal who was not glad to have her kindergarten studied, nor a kindergartner who was not pleased to know that she could assist in the work of nursing sick children, even in this seemingly roundabout way. ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... the country should be committed to their hands. With a small force, complete in itself, at the disposal of such men, more could be effected at the moment for the honour and interests of the country than by long and roundabout despatches, passing through so many hands that one fool in authority nullifies all, as a bad link in an otherwise good chain renders the whole useless. Omitting the other portions of the correspondence, the following letter from Major-general D'Aguilar, dated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Hunter's, Mr. Pickwick was told by that lady that the adventurer was at Bury St. Edmunds, "not many miles from here," that is a short way off. Now Bury is no more than about four-and-twenty miles from Ipswich, a matter of about four hours' coach travelling. Great Yarmouth is fully seventy by roundabout roads, which could not be described as being "a short way from here." It would have taken eight or nine hours—a day's journey. Mr. Pickwick left Eatanswill about one or two, for the lunch was going on, and got to Bury in time for dinner, which, had he left Yarmouth, would have taken ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... nobody about. I seized the keys, unlocked the outer gates and ran for my life. I feared I would be seen and recognized if I came directly through Kief, so I ran to the outskirts of the town and came here by a roundabout road. I have walked and run for the last two hours, through mud and rain, through swamps and ditches, until my feet would support me no longer. I thought ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... generally perfectly of accord in our conclusions," said Miss Leonora; "as for Dora, she comes to the same end by a roundabout way. After what my ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... business which brought him to Cincinnati, started for his distant Virginia home, not by water nor by the direct route through Kentucky to the Old Wilderness Road, but across southern Ohio, over the highway which led to Marietta. The young man told landlord Yeatman that his object in choosing this roundabout course was to see the country; and he told the truth, but not the whole truth. Arlington cared not so much about going to Marietta as about getting there. He had not escaped the consequences of his recent perilous exposure to the rays of bewitching eyes. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... very foolish thing for me to listen to any more of such monstrous flattery. Or perhaps you are satirical and take this roundabout way of telling me that I'm human like yourself. I'm going down to supper, for I prefer Mr. Burleigh's toast to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... for a long time I thought that it was peculiar to our unit, in the same manner that the jargon of certain boys is peculiar to certain schools. But I concluded later that it might have a remote and roundabout origin in the old army slang, "a spruce hand" at "brag"—the latter being a variant of the game of poker, and a spruce hand, apparently, one which, held by a bluffer, contained ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... see, gentlemen, why God should be sending his message to me by so roundabout route as the sinful city of Chicago. I trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views and expressed my own, I have not in any ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... of poetry, greater than the old. But I do not propose to go over the whole list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far- off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still too tough for ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... it," Hirnio told him. "We are bound for Rome and if you join us you can reach Via Salaria with us by the road on which we are going. Should you prefer to follow the road along which we have come, which is rough, but less roundabout, you can, by taking every turn to the right, reach the Via Salaria some miles nearer Rome than where our road will bring us out ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... his direction, and Lambernier knew that to continue in the path he had first chosen would take him directly among the hunters; and, in spite of his insolence, he feared the Baron too much to wish to expose himself to the danger of another chastisement. He therefore retraced his steps and took a roundabout way through the thickets, whose paths were all familiar to him; he descended to the banks of the river ready to ascend to the place appointed for the rendezvous as soon as the hunting ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... in the edge of the rising plain, they drew rein and listened for the sound of pursuing hoof-beats. Facing their horses roundabout, they bent forward, their hands hollowed behind their ears. Out of the darkness, where it was gemmed by the lights of the town, came the ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... Charlotte broke out. "You'll meet him coming home if you wait any longer. Here; I'll tell you how to go a roundabout way." ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... he demanded, as soon as Lucy Ware was free, and there was a sudden lull in the conversation roundabout as the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... the Rover boys stepped out of sight in the building. They saw him re-enter the Hall, and then they took a roundabout course which soon brought them to the campus, where they ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... roundabout route home, for he did not want to see Nan until he had thought out this matter to his own satisfaction. To help people poorer or weaker than himself, or to "keep straight" himself, and help others to do likewise—this ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... woman to reason, they shut their college doors against her so that she can not study that manly accomplishment, and then they blame her for taking a short cut to the same conclusion they reach in their roundabout, lumbering processes of ratiocination. Do these gentlemen wish us to set aside God's laws, pick up logic on the sidewalks, and go step by step to a point we can reach with one flash of intuition? As long as we have the gift of catching truth by the telegraph wires, neither ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Pecksniff himself. He had gone into the church to rest, and lying down in one of the high-back pews, had gone to sleep, and now the voices of Tom and Mary had awakened him. He listened and waited till they had both gone; then he stole out and went home by a roundabout way. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... Some monarchs take roundabout ways into note, While His short cut to fame is—the cut of his coat; Philip's Son thought the World was too small for his Soul, But our Regent's finds room in a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... and nearer to his old haunts, yet taking a roundabout road, as the moth is drawn to the candle, or as water descends to its level, he went slowly on, having little hope of comfort in his home, and not knowing very well ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... in the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road—the road that led ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... by the morning train to Guildford station, where I was waiting for him. He was in his most even and mellow humour. We walked in a leisurely way and through roundabout tracks for some four hours along the ancient green road which you know, over the high grassy downs, into old chalk pits picturesque with juniper and yew, across heaths and commons, and so up to our windy promontory, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... have done you a service; so you feel yourself bound to give me something which I am not to give to a neighbour, unless he has done something special for me. I have heard of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that it seems to us a troublesome and roundabout custom; and we don't know how to manage it. And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my business, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer. Besides, if one person gave ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... upon herself. With a straightforward, simple and interesting tale and some considerable gifts for reproducing character, she has deliberately sacrificed these advantages by telling her story in the most roundabout and awkward manner imaginable. The theme is the influence of heredity, as shown in the working out of a strain of Spanish blood in a Sussex peasant stock, the victims of this inconvenient blend being Ruth and the young cousin whom half-unwillingly she marries; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... thermometer registered 108 deg. in the shade. What a climate Natal has! For fickleness it beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal was followed by a momentary lull, and then spasmodic ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... manager—a roundabout, red-faced, consequential little cockney—mounted the rostrum, and begged to announce to the company that that "celebrated wocalist, Mr. James Green, so well known as a distinguished amateur and conwivialist, both at Bagnigge Wells, and Vite Conduit House, LONDON, had werry kindly consented, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... as we afterward learned, with American rifles, and the usual kamma, or huge dagger, swinging from a belt of cartridges. These fellows, like the zaptiehs, were fond of ostentation. They frequently led us a roundabout way to show us off to their relatives or friends in a neighboring village. Nature at last came to our deliverance. As we stood on a prominent ridge taking a last look at Mount Ararat, now more than fifty miles away, a storm came upon us, showering hailstones ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... I gave up the chase. The whole neighborhood by that time was aroused, and we thought best to retrace our steps to the place whence we started. Then we took a roundabout course until we reached the railroad, along which we travelled. For a long distance there was unusual stir and commotion. Every house was lighted up; and we heard people talking and horses galloping this way and that way, with other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the deck-hand, we'll take the long boat an' go out an' explore this region roundabout. Somebody may have gasoline somewhere, and if so, we can git it, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... Ug-g-h! No, it isn't that. It's the lugging the poor girl into his ma's sphere of influence. He's conscious of his ma, but adores her. Only he's aware she's overwhelming, and always gets her own roundabout way. I prefer Tishy's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... of the open fire made us a little drowsy, but something in the way Mrs. Todd spoke of Shell-heap Island waked my interest. I waited to see if she would say any more, and then took a roundabout way back to the subject by saying what was first in my mind: that I wished the Green Island family were there to spend the evening with us,—Mrs. Todd's mother and her ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... been through several phases of change since this was written—for better and for worse. It is a thriving place in these later days, and new farming conditions have improved the country roundabout. But it was a desert outpost then, a catch-all for the human drift which every whirlwind of discovery sweeps along. Gold and silver hunting and mine speculations were the industries—gambling, drinking, and murder were ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... work, 'Lovell the Widower,' is 'a very clever sketch, but as a novel is rather drawn out.' 'The Roundabout Papers' make very pleasant reading. In one 'he compares himself to a pagan conqueror driving in his chariot up the Hill of Coru, with a slave behind him to remind him that he is only mortal.' In 1863, suddenly, Thackeray died, seven years ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... throat was afire. He laughed in the sudden gaiety of his heart. Had he been dull? He did not know; but at any rate he would be dull no longer. He got up and stood unsteadily, regarding the universe with an agreeable smile. He began to remember. He could not remember very well, because of a steam roundabout that was beginning in his head. And he knew he had been disagreeable at home, just because they wanted to be happy. They were quite right; life should be as gay as possible. He would go home and make it up, and reassure them. And why not take some of this delightful toadstool with ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... who it was, he swerved hurriedly in another direction, and got to his destination by a roundabout way, feeling as he reached it about as miserable and hopeless as it was possible for ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... bolt which kept them from entering the passage from the corridor of the Chateau Larouge and thus forcing them to take a long, roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm," had not counted on their shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern, doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he himself had done. And lo! here they were, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... praise before they reached home. Nan thought her first Dunport acquaintance very pleasant, and frankly said so. This seemed to be very gratifying to her aunt, and they walked toward home together by a roundabout way and in excellent spirits. It seemed more and more absurd to Nan that the long feud and almost tragic state of family affairs should have come to so prosaic a conclusion, and that she who had been the skeleton of her aunt's ancestral closet ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... when I happened one day to go to Portsdown fair. I thought the walk would do me good, and I wanted to see some of the fun going on. Well, after I had been to see the beasts and the raree shows, and the tumblers, and theatres, and conjurers, and taken a turn in a roundabout, on a wooden horse, which I found more easy to ride than a real one, because, do ye see, the wooden one never kicks, while, to speak the truth, whenever I've got on a regular-built animal, he to ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... the farmers couldn't pay all the rent, the agent would turn them out of their houses. This was called "evicting" them. The farm that Mr McQueen lived on, as well as the village and all the country roundabout, was owned by the Earl of Elsmore, who lived most of the year in great style in England. The agent who collected rents was Mr Conroy. Nobody liked Mr Conroy very much, but everybody was afraid of him, because he could do so ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... now, to surround his residence with a deep and broad ditch, and observe those ceremonies when a visitor called upon him, we would call him insane; yet, that is precisely what we do with regard to the transfer of real estate, observing still the tortuous roundabout methods of conveying, resorted to in those days for the purpose of evading the oppressions of feudalism. Nay, the analogy is so strong, that in our Law Courts, and Deeds we still use the same barbarous Norman French jargon ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... across the plateau of Langres, we set a roundabout course for Paris. There is one great pleasure about automobiling that is considerably curtailed if one sets out to follow precisely a preconceived itinerary, and for that reason we were, in a measure, going where ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... trouble that evening at the big-riffle crossing was this way"—it is the dying Bledsoe, of course, who is being quoted. "The man they sent to the mill with the message did a lot of loose talking on his way back after he gave in the message, and in this roundabout way the word got to me at my house on the Eden's Swamp road soon after dinnertime. Now I had always got along fine with both of the Stackpoles, and had only friendly feelings toward them; but maybe there's some people still alive back there in that county who can remember what ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... this were a few necessities in the line cooking utensils and food. Most of their luggage had been sent on by another route, as had also their supplies. Doctor Hobbs had wished them to go to the landing where their boat was to meet them, by following this roundabout course, having had some reason of his own for visiting the country. His folks in Cranford owned considerable land in this vicinity, and it was said that there were out- croppings of valuable copper to be found upon it; which accounted ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... never could trust myself so far as that, nearly. You might be pretty nigh it one way and all wrong another, for you have to consider length and breadth and roundabout. I will tell you the best way for you to do. Set the doll standing on a bit of paper, and draw a pencil all round her foot with the point close to it on the paper. Both feet will be better, for ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... neared the mill, Will motioned to them to stay where they were, and ran ahead to intercept a guard. A moment later he returned with the latter, and the whole party made its way hurriedly and stealthily in a roundabout direction, which would almost certainly intercept ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... house, a-buildin' new barns and hen-coops and fences and the like, and I've heerd tell that the house where he kep' his pigs were better than any dwellin'-house in that region, and the whole place were the wonder of the country roundabout; but arter he had fixed his house all up like a ship, with little staterooms all through the upper part of it, and had got everythin' inside and out in shipshape order, and there weren't nothin' else he could think of for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... general officer. On one occasion when I accompanied him in a change of position, we passed the Ninth Corps column in march, and it was interesting to see how he was greeted by the troops which had been with him in his North Carolina campaign. He wore that day a "Norfolk jacket," a brown knit roundabout, fitting close to his person; his hat was the stiff broad-rimmed, high-crowned regulation hat, worn rather rakishly, with gold cord, acorn-tipped; his pistol-belt was a loose one, allowing the holster to hang on his hip ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... rest of the world. Undoubtedly we shall one day have a cable to the United States, and that will certainly greatly facilitate commerce. At present, telegrams coming from your country to this must come by a very roundabout journey." ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... news of the gold discovery filtered to us in a roundabout way through vessels to the Sandwich Islands, and then appeared again in the columns of some Baltimore paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... of myself, or try to mend one mistake by making another," she said with a heavy sigh. "I 'll do what I can for Fan, and not stand between her and a chance of happiness. Let me see, how can I begin? I won't walk with him any more; I 'll dodge and go roundabout ways, so that we can't meet. I never had much faith in the remarkable coincidence of his always happening home to dinner just as I go to give the Roths their lesson. The fact is, I like to meet him, I am glad to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... the hotel very slowly, and having taken a somewhat roundabout course it was not until an hour after I had left the restaurant that I arrived there. I went into all the public rooms, and looked for my friend. But he was nowhere visible. Then, feeling somewhat uneasy, I went to his bedroom door, and was much relieved at hearing him bid me enter. I found ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... according to the charter of the shipbuilding company, these vessels cannot be sold to any foreign government without the consent of Downing Street. That is the reason why the affair had to be conducted in such a roundabout manner." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I surely assert that B is below A; and I cannot make both assertions about A and B at the same time without a contradiction. To explain this by an association of simultaneous and successive sensations seems to be a curiously roundabout way of 'explaining.' Every assertion is also a denial; and, if I am entitled to say anything, I am enabled without any help from association to deny its contradictory. On Mill's showing, the assertion and the denial of its ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... is not {17} surprising that Sir James Craig soon took umbrage at the language and policy of Le Canadien. At first he made his displeasure felt in a somewhat roundabout way. In the summer of 1808 he dismissed from the militia five officers who were reputed to have a connection with that newspaper, on the ground that they were helping a 'seditious and defamatory journal.' One of these officers was Colonel Panet, who had fought ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles

... pleasant account of it. "There were various booths for eating and drinking, and the selling of trinkets and sweetmeats; and in one place there was a great circle cleared, in which the common people waltzed and polka'd, without cessation, to the music of a band. There was a great roundabout for children (oh my stars what a family were proprietors of it! A sunburnt father and mother, a humpbacked boy, a great poodle-dog possessed of all sorts of accomplishments, and a young murderer of seventeen who turned the machinery); and there were some games of chance and skill established under ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... a year prior to his own death, this defect of memory was very noticeable, and extended even to the names of common objects, so that in talking he would use quaint, roundabout expressions to supply the place of missing words. He would call a church, for instance, "that building in the town where all the people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the official who had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's Notch on the Axe in Roundabout Papers.* Both deal with a mysterious being who passes through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely— you never find authentic evidence of his disease. In other later times, at other courts, such an one ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... straight to the village, he took a roundabout road to the camp on the verge of Abbot's Wood. Here he found the vagrants in a state of great excitement, as Lord Garvington had that afternoon sent notice by a gamekeeper that they were to leave his land the next day. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... heeded him, nor did he notice any one he knew. There was a new assemblage of station loafers, and none of these recognized him. Suitcase in hand, his soft hat pulled well down, he walked quickly round the crowd and took a roundabout way through quiet streets ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... it. For he had not gone far before he turned, and called back, "Bring Steve into the house, Charlotte. He will stay, and have a bit of supper with us, no doubt." Perhaps the lovers made the way into the house a little roundabout. But Sandal was not an unjust man; and having given them the opportunity, he did not blame them for taking it. Besides he could trust Charlotte. Though the heavens fell, he ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... afraid it would spoil her to be made so much of at her age; make her, perhaps, egotistical and vain. But it was not Archie's way to show these fears openly. He did not weep loudly or throw things about as many boys might have done. His methods were more roundabout, more subtle. He gave hints and suggestions of his views that should have been understood by the intelligent. He said one morning with ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... more than willing, for he seldom received instruction. With now and then a word of counsel or warning from the wise man of the west in the corner, he cautiously assembled two other fizzes, while Mr. Pike, in a most nonchalant and roundabout manner, sought information concerning affairs of state, local politics, the Governor-General's household and Princess Kalora. Popova told more than he had meant to tell and more than he knew ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... parasitical part. There were thus discovered, by translating the principle of equivalence, numerical relations between the magnitudes of electricity, for instance, and the magnitudes of mechanics. Heat was a sort of variable intermediary convenient for calculation, but introduced in a roundabout way and destined to disappear in ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... his hat and coat and strolled vaguely forth, and in an hour or two came by a roundabout course to the gondola station nearest his own house. There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring for his custom, he stepped into one and ordered the man to row ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... I like to see," he answered. "We shall do, depend upon it. I've no great fancy for being caught by the Spaniards and clapped into prison; and they are certain to be looking for us all along the western coast. We shall have to go rather a roundabout way, but that can't be helped. Now, from what I hear, the Indians have pretty well cleared the country of the white men to the south of this, so we shall have little to fear from the Spaniards; and as you say the Indians are your friends, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... maxim was impressed on us by the roundabout route we took to reach the field only a few hundred yards away where the remainder ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... from the house early in the afternoon. Unable to go to the Hill of the Muses, or up the river-road, she had taken a long, roundabout path around the outskirts of the village and so reached the hills back of the vineyard. The air of the valley seemed to suffocate her; she longed to climb to the silent places, where the four winds of heaven ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance. Only the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was published another friend—Sacks let us call him—scowls ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... have had no orders to return. Sir John expects me to stay. At least, so I've heard in a roundabout way." ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... neither more nor less virtue than one which he has struck in a moment by the friction of a lucifer match; but to the ignorant and superstitious this truth is far from apparent, and accordingly they take infinite pains to do in a roundabout way what they might have done directly with the greatest ease, and what, even when it is done, is of no use whatever for the purpose in hand. A vast proportion of the labour which mankind has expended throughout the ages has been no better spent; ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... pounding along all night, up hill and down dale. The sun rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of the stampede had sustained us, and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... large balance against Jack for his impudence to him in the field. Nevertheless, the fair Amelia continued her attentions, and talked of hunting, occasionally diverging into observations on Lord Scamperdale's fine riding and manly character and appearance, in the roundabout way ladies send their messages and compliments ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... but the boys went with him just the same, and they never noticed how little he was washed and dressed. The best of them had not an overcoat; and underclothing was unknown among them. When a boy had buttoned up his roundabout, and put on his mittens, and tied his comforter round his neck and over his ears, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... finished the garment upon which she had been working, she had not even unrolled the other roundabout, and it was now nine o'clock at night. A sense of her destitute condition, and of the pressing necessity there was for her to let every minute leave behind some visible impression, made her, after Henry and Emma were in ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... reach the fresh pitch was oozing. A bear seldom passes a bleeding jackpine. It is his chief tonic, and Thor licked the fresh pitch with his tongue. In this way he absorbed not only turpentine, but also, in a roundabout sort of way, a whole pharmacopoeia of medicines made from ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... him. Knox had never been able to bear contradiction, especially when he was somewhat in the wrong; and those who wish to acquire new virtues must not postpone them to their last hours. His defence was roundabout and ineffectual; and all were glad when he parted from these details of his long life-struggle, so that his friends, with tears, might take their last look of his worn and wearied face. The effort had been too much ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... Indians coming up close, they had to abandon the attempt, although most of the horses and some of the cattle got safely home. One of the men reached the gate ahead of the Indians; the other was cut off, and took a roundabout route through the woods. He speedily distanced all of his pursuers but one; several times he turned to shoot the latter, but the Indian always took prompt refuge behind a tree, and the white man then renewed his flight. At last he reach a fenced orchard, on the border of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... who carried their letter, to send a copy of it to the Laodiceans." He charged them, himself, to do so. Why, at the same instant, is the Apostle to be thought to have adopted two such different methods of achieving one and the same important end? And why, instead of this roundabout method of communication, were not the Ephesians ordered,—if not by S. Paul himself, at least by Tychicus,—to send a copy of their Epistle to Colosse direct? And why do we find the Colossians charged to read publicly {GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU}{GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA}{GREEK ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... roundabout way," she said. "It would have been seven miles nearer if you had come by the cross-road. But I suppose you thought you ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... talk that over later," said her father. "Just now I am going to tell you about our auto tour. We are going, as I said, to the city of Portland. It is three hundred miles there, but the roundabout roads we will take may make ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope

... all in all to each other. A small thing, Sylvia. But crowd your life with such small things? Spying and deceit and a game of catch-as-catch-can played by the father and son! My letters were read—I used to know, for roundabout questions would be put leading up to the elucidation of a sentence which to any one but myself would be obscure! Do you think any child could grow up straight, if his boyhood passed in that atmosphere of trickery? I don't know. Only I think that ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... rags over me until he was gone. Then she would slip me off to school through the back way. I can see her now with her hands upon my shoulder, shoving me along through the woods and underbrush, in a roundabout way, keeping me all the time out of sight of the great plantation until we reached the point, a mile away from home, where we came to the public road. There my mother would bid me good-bye, whereupon ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... tips of their tongues about the different ways there were of being lost at sea. Rudolf in particular would have liked to know whether it was a hurricane or sharks or pirates or a nice desert island that had been the end of that little boy, and he was about to begin his questioning in a roundabout manner by asking whether sea serpents had often been known to swallow ships whole, when the door opened, and in came Betsy, Aunt Jane's old servant. She had the lamp in one hand and the great brass warming-pan, with which she always warmed the big ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... hours talking of this and that to those sage carters who rest for ever in the taps of country inns, while the big sleek brass jingling horses wait patiently outside with their waggons; he got a job with some van people who were wandering about the country with swings and a steam roundabout and remained with them for three days, until one of their dogs took a violent dislike to him and made his duties unpleasant; he talked to tramps and wayside labourers, he snoozed under hedges by day and in outhouses ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... o'clock when he started, in a roundabout way, for the home of Eliphalet Loop. The more direct route would have been down the street from his own house to the Boggs City pike, first turn to the left, fifty paces straight ahead, and he would have found himself at ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... Cyprus, where Barnabas was well acquainted, and through that section of Asia Minor roundabout the province of Cilicia, where Paul was practically at home. Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia and it was to this region that he went for some part of the time between his conversion and his call to the missionary work (Acts ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... Quiz learned, in a roundabout way, where and when the feast was to be held, he came rushing into Tug's room, where the Dozen had gathered Saturday evening after a long day spent in skating on the first ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... a roundabout course, and went to Madockawando's lodge, near the fort. All the members of the family, except the old chief, were away at the sugar-making. The great Abenaqui's dignity would not allow him to drag in fuel to the fire, so he squatted nursing the ashes, and raked out a coal ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French were said to have ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... fork—the left fork leading to Charlottesville—and about a mile beyond the fork Hampton had taken up and strongly intrenched a line across both roads, being reinforced by Fitzhugh Lee, who, as before related, had joined him about noon by a roundabout march. Torbert soon hotly engaged this line, and by the impetuosity of his first attack, gained some advantage; but the appearance of Fitzhugh Lee's troops on the right, and Hampton's strong resistance in front, rendered futile ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Paul. I want to tell you how sorry I am for believing what came to me in a roundabout way. I'll never forgive myself, never!" she went on, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... the excitement of all three, and he saw Catharine leave her friends at the Rectory, for they were evidently going to stay the night there. Mrs. Cardew went into the house first, but Catharine turned down Fosbrooke Street, a street which did not lead, save by a very roundabout way, to the Terrace. Presently Mr. Cardew came out and walked slowly down Rectory Lane. In those days it was hardly a thoroughfare. It ended at the river bank, and during daylight a boat was generally there, belonging to an old, superannuated boatman, who carried ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... infantry battalions to occupy it, and soon after the main column followed. It would appear, however, that he still moved cautiously, and that the battalion, or the troops that followed, avoided a direct approach, and reached the Jamaica Road on the other side of the pass by a roundabout lane known as the Rockaway Path. The innkeeper Howard was waked up, and with his son compelled to guide the British around to the road, where it was discovered, as the patrol had stated, that the pass was unguarded. When the whole force had marched ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... his wife's return from the tavern, when he had peered from his hiding-place in his library window, he had not mentioned his grandson by name; and yet the thought of him seemed forever lying beneath his captious exclamations. He pricked nervously at the subject, made roundabout allusions to the base ingratitude from which he suffered; and the desertion of Big Abel had damned for him the whole faithful race from ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... him, he began the morning's hunt, frequently turning to see how Mishosha kept up. He saw him faltering at every step, and almost benumbed with cold, but encouraged him to follow, saying, we shall soon get through and reach the shore; although he took pains, at the same time, to lead him in roundabout ways, so as to let the frost take complete effect. At length the old man reached the brink of the island where the woods are succeeded by a border of smooth sand. But he could go no farther; his legs became stiff and refused motion, and he found himself fixed to the spot. But he still kept stretching ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... often remarked, that a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. Every creature must be allowed to "run" its own development in its own way; the egg's way may seem a very roundabout manner of doing things; but it IS its way, and it is one of which man, upon the whole, has no great reason to complain. Why the fowl should be considered more alive than the egg, and why it should be said that the hen lays the egg, and not that the egg lays the hen, these are questions ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... was still nervous and uneasy, so that I shrank from meeting her with the necessary question about Dolcino. None the less, however, was I impatient to learn how the morning found him; and, as Mrs. Ambient had not seen me, I passed into the grounds by a roundabout way, and, stopping at a further gate, hailed the doctor just as he was driving away. Mrs. Ambient had returned to the house before he ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... interested in the answer to his question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain rebuff—he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... Robert Rogers had no difficulty in obtaining all the men he wanted. The settlers had suffered so much from the enemy that they were eager to take their revenge. There was a fascination in the service. How stirring the thought of stealing through the woods, making roundabout marches, shooting a deer or bear, eating the nice steaks, lying down to sleep beneath the trees; up again in the morning, coming upon the French and Indians unawares, pouring in a volley, killing the savages or taking them prisoners, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... his head. "You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it's about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. They ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... early eighties, the navy had reached its nadir, and we were then utterly incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all. Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to build up a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout steps we took to accomplish our purpose. In the reaction after the colossal struggle of the Civil War our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole energy into business, into money-making, into the development, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... smile, however, to myself that he should make so many circles and roundabout motions to come at a discourse which had no such rarity at the bottom of it, if he had known all. But there was another reason why I resolved not to have him, when, at the same time, if he had courted me in a manner less honest or virtuous, I believe I should not have denied him; but I shall ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... explained either by the general who wrote the despatch, or by the messenger who carried it, as they falsely represented it to have been a drawn battle; but as soon as the praetor Pomponius heard the news of this second misfortune, he assembled the people in the Forum, and said, without any roundabout apologies whatever, "Romans, we have lost a great battle, the army is destroyed, and the consul Flaminius has fallen. Now, therefore, take counsel for your own safety." These words produced the same impression on the people ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... an eye-opener, I must say; for I hadn't seen her for more than two minutes together, and when we did meet, I found her to be just a jolly little American chassis, slim and shapely, and as full of "go" as a schoolgirl on a roundabout. Her idea, she told me, was to drive a Delahaye car she had hired, from Paris to Monte Carlo, and there to meet her husband with the jaw-cracking name; whom, she assured me, with the look of an angel in the blue picture, she hadn't seen for ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... in his great work, after elaborately describing and carefully illustrating the skill exhibited in individual cases by Spiders in their aerial labours, considers himself justified in concluding as follows:—"The manner in which the ends of the radii which terminate upon the herb are wrapped roundabout and braced by the notched zone; the manner in which the wide non-viscid scaffold lines are woven in order to give vantage ground from which to place the close-lying and permanent viscid spirals, upon which the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay



Words linked to "Roundabout" :   junction, indirect, route, road, ride



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