"Uncouth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of this agitated figure on the path ahead, stood still for a moment. He understood neither the noises nor the uncouth gestures, but made sure that some accident ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wants something to relieve his pain, to mitigate the anguish of dyspnea, to bring back motion and sensibility to the dead limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. What is it to him that you can localize and name by some uncouth term the disease which you could not prevent and which you cannot cure? An old woman who knows how to make a poultice and how to put it on, and does it tuto, eito, jucunde, just when and where it is wanted, is better,—a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... undisguised wonder at the scene before her. Never had she even imagined such a home. Indeed, it seemed like profanation of the word to call the bare, uncleanly room by that sweetest of English words. It contained not a home-like feature. Her eyes were not resting on decent poverty, but upon uncouth, repulsive want; and this awful impoverishment was not seen in the few articles of cheap, dilapidated furniture so clearly as in the dull, sodden faces of the man and woman who kennelled there. No trace of manhood or womanhood ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow—to see his uncouth fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive opponent!—not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and served almost ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doorway watching the scout as he departed. The expression of the lad's face plainly showed his love and admiration for the man. The calm courage of Boone, softened as it was by his gentleness and guided by his prudence, was crowned by a marvellous modesty. His robust, somewhat uncouth body showed the great strength of the hunter, while it concealed his quickness. His manner was dignified, almost cold, so silent and quiet was he under ordinary circumstances. His face, however, homely though it was, was at times lighted by an expression that was exceedingly ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame— God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... his uneducated descendants believe to be sorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever contributions historical fact may have added to his character, the Troll is originally a creation of mythology, like Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready gullibility is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with the Troll." Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the counterpart alike of Jack the Giant-killer, and of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... A rather uncouth-looking set of names, which occur chiefly on the border of Cheshire and Lancashire, are compounded from bottom or botham, a wide shallow valley suited for agriculture. Hotspur, dissatisfied with his fellow-conspirators' map-drawing, expresses ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... sum that our young mate knew to be very considerable. Rose had made him acquainted with the sex of Jack Tier since their own marriage; and he at once saw that the claims to the gold in question, of this uncouth wife, who was so soon to be a widow, might prove to be as good in law, as they unquestionably were in morals. On representing the facts of the case to Capt. Mull and the legal functionaries at Key West, it was determined to relinquish this money to the heirs of Spike, as, indeed, they must have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... word from the Bishop his tormentors vanished, and when he pulled up before the uncouth figure he found him to be a man not yet in his prime, with an open face, now blank and expressionless, overgrown with a ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... uncouth at first, but that was all. Oh, no! Mysie is a dear little girl. I should be very glad to have her with Phyllis altogether, and so would Rotherwood. But she was very young when ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back in his own quarters, moved about with a caution not untouched with apprehension. Mrs. Teetzel, he knew had a tread that was noiseless. She also had the habit of appearing, in curl-papers, at uncouth moments, as unheralded as an apparition from the other world. And Trotter's conscience was not clear. For months past he had kept secreted in his trunk one of those single-holed gas heaters known as a "hot plate." This he surreptitiously ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... whispered consultation. As a result, Jute returned to the quarters and brought back three others whom he knew would enter into the schemes on foot. By midnight Chunk had six of the braver and more reckless spirits among the slaves bound to him by such uncouth oaths as he believed would hold them most strongly. Then they returned to their cabins while the chief conspirator (after again reconnoitring the overseer's cottage) sought the vicinity of ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... supposes you meant as a compliment, even as the old people meant to pass a compliment to their great folks, when they called them bears; though she cannot help thinking that they might have found an animal as strong as a bear, and somewhat less uncouth, to call their great folks after: even as she thinks yourself, amongst your great store of words, might have found something a little more genteel to call her hair after than flax, which, though strong and useful, is rather a coarse and common ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... let him confidently return to his business, and withal not to forget to spread my gown upon the bed so that it might be sure to cover them both. These ridiculous circumstances are the main of the effect, our fancy being so far seduced as to believe that so strange and uncouth formalities must of necessity proceed from some abstruse science. Their inanity gives them reverence and weight. However, certain it is that my figures proved themselves more Veneran than Solar, and the fair bride had no reason ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... uncouth he is!' Masha said to herself. 'Do you know, Mr. Lutchkov,' she answered him with a smile, 'it's not always easy to give a direct ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... coasts every year, ostensibly with the design of prosecuting the herring fishery, but which, supported mainly by large Government bounties, and in but small part by their fishing speculations, are in reality kept up by the State as a means of rearing sailors for the French navy. Their lugger—an uncouth-looking vessel, representative rather of the navigation of three centuries ago than of that of the present day—lay stranded in the harbour beside us; and, their work over for the day, they seemed as quiet and silent as the calm evening whose stillness they were enjoying; when the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... colleges—sumptuous buildings—palaces to be compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich idlers, who sleep and get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they spend in training, clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be clergymen.... In the fine places that have been built for public amusements, you could hear a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women walk round and round an orchestra that is set up in the middle. The Baron compares these circuits to the seven processions ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... from the East, and cleared The mists, that melted with advancing Morn, When suddenly from out the woods appeared An uncouth form, a creature wan and worn, Scarce like a man, in piteous plight forlorn. Suppliant his hands he stretches to the shore; We turn and look on tatters tagged with thorn, Dire squalor and a length of beard,—what more, A Greek, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... who passed a day or two at the Concordia as an ordinary traveller would carry away a strong impression. The people of the house would seem to him little short of savages, filthy in person and in habits, utterly uncouth in their demeanour, perpetual wranglers and railers, lacking every qualification for the duties they pretended to discharge. In England their mere appearance would revolt decent folk. With my better opportunity of judging them, I overcame the first natural antipathy; I saw their good side, and ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... feelings in woman, fall before the dire prostratiou of this malady. A young lady will recline unwittingly in the arms of a perfect stranger, and the bride of three months, deserted by her husband, will offer no resistance to the uncouth seaman, who, in his kindness, would loosen the laces that confine her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Elizabeth, was flattering in the extreme. The courtiers stared and smiled at his bareheaded body-guard, with their crocus-dyed vests, short jackets, and shaggy cloaks. But the broad-bladed battle-axe, and the sinewy arm which wielded it, inspired admiration for all the uncouth costume. The haughty indifference with which the Prince of Ulster treated every one about the Court, except the Queen, gave a keener edge to the satirical comments which were so freely indulged in at the expense of his style of dress. The wits proclaimed him "O'Neil the Great, cousin to Saint ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... didn't know that better than a Papist. Look you, have I shed one tear?" She blinked hard bright eyes defiantly. The Mother went on in that velvet voice of hers, making the uncouth dialect sound like the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fortune to the lowest shifts of his calling, such as the horse-play of Policinello, and the imitation of uncouth sounds, that resembled nothing either in heaven or earth, Pippo was a clever knave in his way, and was quite equal to a display of the higher branches of his art, whenever chance gave him an audience capable ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... From the aesthetic standpoint uncouth and noisy machines, such as mowers and reapers, cannot be compared to a lusty team of men with scythes, in their white shirts, backed by the flowering meadows; or a sunny field of busy harvesters facing a golden wall of corn, and leaving behind them the fresh-shorn stubble dotted with sheaves and ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... floats were painting the hulls of the black ships. The faces of the men they met were red and sunburned mostly,—not with the sunburn of the fields, but of the sea; these men lurched in their gait with an uncouth heaviness, yet gave them way kindly enough; but certain dull-eyed, frowzy-headed women seemed to push purposely against her grandfather, and one of them swore at Lydia for taking up all the sidewalk with her bundles. There ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... he was as hungry as a Yukon husky. He observed that Culvera's table manners were nice and particular, whereas those of his chief, though they ate off silver taken from the home of a Federal supporter during a raid, were uncouth in the extreme. He wolfed his food, throwing it into his mouth from knife or fork as rapidly as ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... mornings, growing darker as they are continually doing, nobody felt in haste to leave their beds. Of course every one wore his Sunday clothes and I put on my very best waist of olive green satin with a good black skirt, which had a little train, thereby effectively hiding my uncouth feet, still clad as they are ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Seated with both elbows on the parapet of the tower, one can watch and wonder over that heat-tortured hive till the dawn. 'How do they live down there? What do they think of? When will they awake?' More tinkling of sluiced water-pots; faint jarring of wooden bedsteads moved into or out of the shadows; uncouth music of stringed instruments softened by distance into a plaintive wail, and one low grumble of far-off thunder. In the courtyard of the mosque the janitor, who lay across the threshold of the Minar when ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... to like the people of his section very much. They were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly industrious; but they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways commanded respect. Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the old fashioned pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry. Whoever dragged the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... They prowled about the burned hamlets, and infested town and country like little wolves. The government asked Pestalozzi to take charge of some of them, and offered him some little aid. It was a singular spectacle when this uncouth man, then in the vigor of his years (it was in 1798), entered the ruins of a ravaged convent, with his mob of one hundred and fifty outcast children. He was all alone with them; and some of them were sickly and stunted; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... figure! What refinement!" and of another, "What a badly-bred, vulgar, common brute!" Later they would both come out of their bathing-boxes, and the "brute" would be a smartly dressed officer carrying himself with ease and distinction, and the "aristocrat" would be an untidy, uncouth "Tommy" shambling along. Truly on sight one should never judge a ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... spectacle, however, I found a journey through this weird region most fascinating and mysterious. At night it appears as a vast plain gleaming with lights and studded with dark objects, half seen and suggesting primitive machinery of uncouth proportions. Huge lengths of pipes creep from the shadows on one hand into the far-off regions of ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... "Don't let her come in here." She had a surprising voice, of a barbaric quality, the ring of metal. Hearing it you were mentally translated for an instant, and thought of far-off, palm-girt islands and savages beating strange instruments and chanting to them uncouth syllables. "Rhoda Knox, don't ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... swung again and four or five dark figures jostled noisily out and came haltingly down the street. They walked crazily, like ships without a rudder, veering from one side of the walk to the other, shouting and singing uncouth, ribald songs, hoarse laughter interspersed with ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... tempered, more like the world in general, and she, more—more"—he knew not what, for he would not speak against her, so he finally added, "had she known, just how to take me—just how to make allowances for my rough, uncouth ways, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... the distance to the river, when I suddenly came face to face with a man. He was as primitive and uncouth in appearance as the Grabritins—a shaggy, unkempt savage, clothed in a shirt of skin cured with the head on, the latter surmounting his own head to form a bonnet, and giving to him a most ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... parents were surprised to see her sit down on the floor and throw her arms around the neck of this self-invited and very uncouth visitor. For the girl forgot all of her trumpery concealments in the warmth of her feeling ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... edifice, where now sit the French deputies, was built by Girardini for the Dowager Duchesse de Bourbon in 1722, and, though much changed during various successive eras, is still a unique variety of architectural embellishment which is not uncouth, nor yet wholly appealing. Napoleon remade the heavily imposing facade, so familiar to all who cross the river by the Pont de la Concorde, but its grimness is its ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... goddesses were believed to walk the world in large and majestic freedom,—and when brave deeds of chivalry and self-sacrifice became exalted by the very plenitude of rich imagination, into supernatural facts of heaven conquering, hell-charming prowess. Not then was man made to seem uncouth, or mean and savage in his attempts to dominate the planet, but strong, fearless, and endowed with dignity and power. Not then was every noble sentiment derided,—every truth scourged,—every trust betrayed,-every tenderness mocked,—and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... The travellers now enter a wild forest, which occupies the second division of the seventh circle, where Virgil declares each barren thorn-tree is inhabited by the soul of a suicide. In the gnarly branches perch the Harpies, whose uncouth lamentations echo through the air, and who greedily devour every leaf that sprouts. Appalled by the sighs and wailings around him, Dante questions Virgil, who directs him to break off a twig. No sooner has he done so than he sees blood trickle from the break and hears a ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... into y^e Low Countries, they saw many goodly & fortified cities, strongly walled and garded with troopes of armed men. Also they heard a strange & uncouth language, and beheld y^e differente ma[n]ers & customes of y^e people, with their strange fashons and attires; all so farre differing from y^t of their plaine countrie villages (wherin they were bred, & had so longe lived) as ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... The gross, jaded, uncouth present has slipped from me as a garment might, and I see the past like a little show, struggles and heartbreakings of long ago, and watch it with the same indifferent curiosity as I would the regulated mimicry of a stage play. Pictures ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... applied to the style of Browne; it is vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure; his tropes are harsh, and his combinations uncouth. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... wherever Homer lets us see it, is very innocent cake and wine, with such fruits as were in season. To judge by Nausicaa, their breeding must have been exquisite. Nausicaa standing still, when the uncouth figure of Ulysses emerged from under the wood, all sea slime and nakedness, and only covered with a girdle of leaves—standing still to meet him when the other girls ran away tittering and terrified, is the perfect conception of true ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... mine host of the Abbey Inn a difficult subject for interrogation. Moreover that patriarchal outlook which had been evidenced in his attitude towards the uncouth Edward Hines clearly enough deterred him from imparting to me any facts detrimental to the good name of Upper Crossleys. But on the highroad and just before entering the outskirts of the little country town, I had observed an inn which had ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... every day alarmed at the prospect of a successor, addressed himself to the task of conciliating Valens, who was of a rustic and rather simple character, by tickling him with all kinds of disguised flattery and caresses, calling his uncouth language and rude expressions "flowers of Ciceronian eloquence." Indeed, to raise his vanity higher, he would have promised to raise him up to the stars if he ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... golden forms Majestic moved, that served him in the place Of handmaids; young they seem'd, and seem'd alive, Nor want they intellect, or speech, or force, Or prompt dexterity by the Gods inspired. 520 These his supporters were, and at his side Attendant diligent, while he, with gait Uncouth, approaching Thetis where she sat On a bright throne, seized fast her hand and said, Why, Thetis! worthy as thou art of love 525 And of all reverence, hast thou arrived, Unfrequent here? Speak—tell me thy desire, Nor doubt my services, if thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... excluded from the council on this side also. He was now of that number of recluses who never form themselves into a society. They are as much isolated in respect to each other as they are in regard to the whole, and the more so as in this seclusion the character becomes more and more uncouth. My father, in his travels and in the world which he had seen, might have formed some conception of a more elegant and liberal mode of life than was, perhaps, common among his fellow-citizens. In this respect, however, he was not entirely without ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... comparison requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect strained applications. Between Roman images and English manners, there will be an irreconcilable dissimilitude, and the work will be generally uncouth and party-coloured; neither original nor translated, neither ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Friday evening, I entered the warehouse of Hop Sing. There was that deliciously commingled mysterious foreign odor that I had so often noticed; there was the old array of uncouth-looking objects, the long procession of jars and crockery, the same singular blending of the grotesque and the mathematically neat and exact, the same endless suggestions of frivolity and fragility, the same want of harmony in colors, that were each, in themselves, beautiful and rare. Kites ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... unto the present, but are kept hidden away by the priests, though she promised later to let me view them secretly. And she related a most strange tale of destiny—of a long, barbarous war, filled with the names of warriors and towns sounding most uncouth to my ears; a war lasting many years, during which the Chichimes—for so she named the wild hordes sweeping down upon them from the northward—drove their fathers backward from city to city, beginning far away in the kingdom named Talapa, and pillaging clear to the banks of the great river ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... life here I looked upon as only an incident. The gay tawdry had faded; I realized how much more enduring were the rough, uncouth but genuine products like my friend Mr. Jenks and those of that ilk, who spoke me well instead of merely fair. Health of mind and body should ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... that startled Lady Jane's nerves, and threw Lady Barbara into despair at the harm they would do—a child whose untutored movements were a constant eye-sore and distress to them; and though she could sometimes be bright and fairy- like if unconstrained, always grew abrupt and uncouth when under restraint—a child very far from silly, but apt to say the silliest things—learning quickly all that was mere head-work, but hopelessly or obstinately dull at what was to be done by the fingers—a child whose ways could not be called vulgar, but would have been completely tom-boyish, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Their sober Wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd Vale of Life They kept the noiseless Tenor of their Way. Yet ev'n these Bones from Insult to protect Some frail Memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth Rhimes and shapeless Sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing Tribute of a Sigh. Their Name, their Years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The Place of Fame and Elegy supply: And many a holy Text around ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... yet methinks I do not breathe; I thirst and drink, I drink and thirst again; I sleep and yet do dream I am awake; I hope for that I have; I have and want: I sing and sigh; I love and hate at once. O, tell me, restless soul, what uncouth jar Doth cause in store such ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... difficulty in it but what may easily be overcome by a small degree of practice and application [113]: however, for the further illustration of this matter, and the satisfaction of the curious, a fac simile of one of the recipes is represented in the annexed plate. If here and there a hard and uncouth term or expression may occur, so as to stop or embarrass the less expert, pains have been taken to explain them, either in the annotations under the text, or in the Index and Glossary, for we have given it both titles, as intending it should answer the purpose ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... the hour of his departure, Mrs. Evremonde summoned him to her, and showed him a slip of paper, on which was written, in an uncouth small hand: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indeed a delightful surcease from the dull cares of the day, but finer still would be the resolution in young men of noble lineage to keep their lily-white hands off of property that is not listed on the tax-duplicate in their name, and to refrain from dishonest and secret contact with uncouth crooks from Australia, who induce them to forget their family pride and to conceal valuable gems from the eye of the law! In other words, to come right down to brass tacks, you stole one of the diamond cuff-buttons,—gol darn it!—and I ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... shrieks, and groans and curses, and the sound of a heavy blow, and she sprang from her little bed, to find her mother stretched senseless upon the floor, with the blood trickling from a wound in her head, and a group of uncouth, neighboring women ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... was a man that God endued with a clear and wonderful depth: a discerner of others' spirits, and very much a master of his own. And though that side of his understanding which lay next to the world, and especially the expression of it, might sound uncouth and unfashionable to nice ears, his matter was nevertheless very profound; and would not only bear to be often considered, but the more it was so, the more weighty and instructing it appeared. And as abruptly and ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... else, and then upbraid them for it? And would not the men find us better and more suitable companions and assistants to them in every useful purpose of life?—O that your lordly sex were all like my dear Mr. B.—I don't mean that they should all take raw, uncouth, unbred, lowly girls, as I was, from the cottage, and, destroying all distinction, make such their wives; for there is a far greater likelihood, that such a one, when she comes to be lifted up into ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... making the sergeant the successor of her late husband. For some time past the trooper had seemed to flatter this preference; and Betty, conceiving that her violence might have mortified her suitor, was determined to make him all the amends in her power. Besides, rough and uncouth as she was, the washerwoman had still enough of her sex to know that the moments of reconciliation were the moments of power. She therefore poured out a glass of her morning beverage, and handed it to her ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... toward them she reeled in her walk, stumbling over stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the earth, and in the centre there was something that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates, with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books, full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband told her—it was a ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... himself with a vulgar, arrogant and uncouth set of people. All of the princes and leading Judeans who were taken to Babylon had been forced to sell their estates and properties at whatever price they would bring. These were bought up by anyone ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... the plainsman, and again he spoke with the correctness of one who has known good society. In spite of his careless garb he had the look of class. The well-shaped, lightly poised head, the level blue eyes of a man unafraid, the grace with which he carried himself, all denied that he was an uncouth rustic. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... observed, that in order to constitute a legal wreck, the goods must come to land. If they continue at sea, the law distinguishes them by the barbarous and uncouth appellations of jetsam, flotsam, and ligan. Jetsam is where goods are cast into the sea, and there sink and remain under water: flotsam is where they continue swimming on the surface of the waves: ligan is where they are ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Sir Francis Drake, which was built by his famous ancestor. Here we saw a sight that reminded me of the drawings of Webber from the South Sea Isles; women scarce clothed at all, with feet and legs entirely naked, straw bonnets of uncouth Shapes tied on their heads, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... uncouth fragment of the earliest customs of the Teutons; in which we can still recognise {58} the tone and the phraseology of the Courts of the Eresburg. The Irminsule itself having been described as a trunk of a tree, Thor was worshipped under the same rude symbol; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... Raby is a good woman," continued Priscilla; "she is brave, she is a heroine. Although she is just a commonplace old woman, no one has ever led a grander life in its way. She wears poor clothes— oh, the poorest; she has an uncouth appearance, worse even than I have, but I am quite sure that God— God respects her— God thinks her worthy. When my father and mother died (I was fourteen when my dear mother died) Aunt Raby came and took me ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... wash away in the rains. The house was a stiff, formal parallelogram, resembling a man with high shoulders, appearing to be "stuck up." It had two rows of formal, short and ungraceful windows, that being a point in orthodoxy at the period of its erection. It had a tower, uncouth, and in some respects too large and others too small, if one can reconcile the contradiction; but there are anomalies of this sort in art, as well as in nature. On top of this tower stood a long-legged belfry, which had got a very ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... of this uncouth pack of savages that beset them, stepped a slim, tall fellow with light-blue eyes in a tawny face, eyes in which glinted the light of a wicked humour. He addressed them in the ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... kennel. With his tail slightly vibrant, he conducts a dignified causerie. Unhappily, these talks are always concluded by some breach of manners on Gissing's part. At first he is respectful; but presently his enthusiasm grows too much for him; he begins to leap and frolic and utter uncouth praises of things in general. Then Mike turns soberly and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... that he charmed lions and tigers, and made even the trees sensible of the melodious tones of his lyre. These were mere hyperbolical expressions, which signified the wondrous charms of his eloquence and of his music combined, which he employed in cultivating the genius of a savage and uncouth people. Some conjecture that this personage originally came from Asia into Thrace, and suppose that he, together with Linus and Eumolpus, brought poetry and music into Greece, the use of which, till then, was unknown in that country; and that they introduced, at the same time, the worship ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... front of me and a few paces from my couch—as if I were in a bed, in a bedroom, and had all at once woke up—an uncouth shape rises awry. Even in the darkness I see that it is mangled. I see about its face something abnormal which dimly shines; and I can see, too, by his staggering steps, sunk in the black soil, that his shoes ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... somewhat uncouth, speaking with broad Derbyshire accent, adhering with all his tenacity to his work and to his town position, making good designs, and becoming fairly well-off. But at drawing, his hand swung naturally in big, bold lines, rather ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... men of wit, men of enterprise, who would explore distant seas and colonize new countries; yea, great preachers, like Jeremy Taylor and Hall; and great theologians, like Hooker and Chillingworth,—giving polish and dignity to an uncouth language, and planting religious truth in the minds ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... now inflicted terrible woes on France. The exploits of these free companies hardly belong to English history, though many of their leaders and a large proportion of the rank and file were Englishmen. Cruel, fierce, and uncouth, they still preserved in all military dealings the strict discipline which had taught the English armies the way to victory. The combination of the order of a settled host with the rapacity of a gang of freebooters made them as irresistible as they were destructive. Though Edward ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... more choking a little, and with a curious desire to weep or shout or make uncouth noises. I was now terribly excited. I remember I kicked my way through barricades with such energy that once for my foolishness I came crashing down, my rifle loosing off of its own account and the bullet passing through my ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... he heard a commotion in the water directly under the prow, and, looking over, he saw a strange-looking object, like one of the uncouth monsters of the deep, come to the surface and begin climbing up by ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... still more curious. The lively conversation of the smart lady and the gallant cavalier is cut short, the donkey-driver with uplifted arm ceases to belabour his beast, the oath dies on the lips of the rough seaman or uncouth black, the workman drops his tool, the shopman lays down his measure, children refrain from their play, men quarrelling suspend their dispute, lazy monks engaged in their constant game of draughts neglect to make ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jewish colonies in the government of Kherson. The unfortunate emigrants were seized on the way and conveyed, like criminals, under a military escort into places in which they were not in the least interested. Legislative whims of this kind, coupled with an uncouth system of tutelage, were quite sufficient to crush in many Jews the desire of turning ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... side the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and ragged, dusty men. She had never seen any vaqueros that resembled these horsemen. Vaqueros had grace and style; they were fond of lace and glitter and fringe; they dressed their horses in silvered trappings. But the riders now trampling into the driveway were uncouth, lean, savage. They were guerrillas, a band of the raiders who had been harassing the border since the beginning of the revolution. A second glimpse assured Madeline that they were not ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the winds rose and tossed the vessel about for nine days and drove him back to Goree. After some negotiation with Governor Maxwell by courier, the baggage was rescued and sent to Isaaco by road. The next few pages of his Journal are difficult and barren reading, bristling with nothing but the uncouth names of places where the good ship passed or anchored for the night, and with the hours duly entered as in a log book, according to the Mohammedan hours of prayer. Sailing by way of Yoummy, Jillifrey, Tancrowaly, and Jaunimmarou, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... soldiers made a very uncouth figure, especially the Highlanders. The oddness and barbarity of their garb and arms seemed to have something in ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... her writing-materials together. Aunt Beatrice's tall figure, its stalwart handsomeness disguised in uncouth garments, passed with its usual vigorous gait across the burning sunlight on the lawn and broad gravel walk, to disappear under the awning of a French window. Milly, very pale, had closed her eyes and her hands were ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made; So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the procession spread out for a hundred yards behind the Flopper—bare-footed children; women in multi-colored gingham and calico; men in the uncouth dress of the fields, the uncouthness accentuated by the sprinkling of more pretentious clothing worn by those who had come from the train. And slowly, very slowly, this conglomerate human cosmorama moved on, undulating ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... was an office menial hailing from the district of Gaya, in Behar. He was an intelligent man, but rather unlicked, and was the butt of the younger clerks, who delighted in mocking his uncouth up-country dialect. Pulin, however, had never joined in "ragging" him, and, on one occasion, he lent Ramtonu Rs. 7 for his wife, who was about to increase the population of Gaya. Gratitude for kindness is a marked ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... made signs to Aimery to dismount. The Constable had procured for him a letter in Tartar script, setting out the purpose of his mission. This the outpost could not read, but they recognised some word among the characters, and pointed it out to each other with uncouth murmurings. They were strange folk, with eyes like pebbles and squat frames and short, broad faces, but each horse and man moved in unison like ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... resentment of the poor thing's uncouth sorrow, that she had spoken to her with the hope ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... scarce stirred from his Dorsetshire Parsonage these twenty years, was seized with a Passion to see me just once more, he says: and he is now with me: a Hypochondriack Man, nervous, and restless, with a vast deal of uncouth Humour. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the wild-cat's brindled hide The frontlet of the elk adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude and uncouth tapestry all, To garnish forth the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... with a knowledge, which a call from his friend Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, enabled him to use in fun. Lyell walked in on him, in London, with a spear-head and the curiosity, 'How old do you judge that would be?' The weapon was of stone, uncouth, barbarous. 'A thousand years, eh?' Lyell pursued. Sir George let him go on for a while, then broke in, 'If that's a thousand years old, I likewise am a thousand years old, because one has been taken ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... of the post was the fallen Christ, armless, who had tumbled down and lay in an unnatural posture, the naked, ancient wooden sculpture of the body on the naked, living rock. It was one of the old uncouth Christs hewn out of bare wood, having the long, wedge-shaped limbs and thin flat legs that are significant of the true spirit, the desire to convey a religious ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... "Stranger's Fever" when his youth Had scarcely melted into manhood, so The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow, And by this summer sea where flowers grow In tropic splendor, witness to the truth Of ineradicable race he lies. The law of duty urged that he should roam, Should sail ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... the walls and the ceiling were lined with gold and precious stones; and in reality it was almost literally the truth. The apartment, I soon saw, was small,—for India at least,—and every available space, nook and cranny, were filled with gold and jeweled ornaments, shining weapons, or uncouth but resplendent idols. There were sabres in scabbards set from end to end with diamonds and sapphires, with cross hilts of rubies in massive gold mounting, the spoil of some worsted rajah or Nawab of the mutiny. ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... school; we need not wonder, therefore, that he did not keep his academy above a year and a half. From Mr. Garrick's account he did not appear to have been profoundly reverenced by his pupils. His oddities of manner, and uncouth gesticulations, could not but be the subject of merriment to them; and, in particular, the young rogues used to listen at the door of his bed-chamber, and peep through the key-hole, that they might turn into ridicule his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... was ungrammatical, but she denied that he was uncouth. His deep voice had been very kindly; his clipped mustache was trim; his nails, which had been ragged at that commercial-college lunch, were manicured now; he was sure of himself, while Walter Babson doubted and thrashed about. All of which meant that ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Prince Kaunitz, as, perfectly exhausted from his journey, he fell into an armchair in his own room. "What an abominable idea to undertake this journey! These German roads are as rough and uncouth as the Germans themselves, and I only wonder that we have arrived without ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand—now a rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... those inconveniencies. The rest of our words, which are derived from the Latin chiefly, and the French, with some small sprinklings of Greek, Italian, and Spanish, are some relief in poetry, and help us to soften our uncouth numbers; which, together with our English genius, incomparably beyond the trifling of the French, in all the nobler parts of verse, will justly give us the pre-eminence. But, on the other hand, the effeminacy of our pronunciation, (a defect common to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... wayfarer meets with very few persons on the road; seldom an individual, and only now and then, at an interval of miles, a group of men mounted on mules, each person carrying a gun; or perhaps a convoy of loaded mules and asses with several muleteers, some mounted and some on foot, who urge by uncouth cries and blows the weary beasts over the rocky or swampy ground, or up some steep acclivity or across some torrent's bed. At times he will see a shepherd or two watching their flocks; these are half-naked, wild ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... a father, he proceeded to atone for the mistake by a rough and discomposing embrace, and such a familiar and frolicksome greeting as none but a camp follower would have felt flattered with. Then, seating himself before her, he commenced his conversation in a rude and uncouth tone, and with rather a forced affectation of military bluntness; from which, however, as his eye dwelt upon the richness of her apparel and his mind began to succumb to the charm of her native refinement, he gradually and unconsciously subsided, in turn, into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... near them undiscovered as I could, and then, before any of them saw me, I called aloud to them in Spanish, "What are ye, gentlemen?" They started up at the noise, but were ten times more confounded when they saw me, and the uncouth figure that I made. They made no answer at all, but I thought I perceived them just going to fly from me, when I spoke to them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... grape-vines, and all our water-loving shrubs, that it suggests to every one, who ever read a fairy tale, a scene for the revels of elves and fairies. Yet no Oberon—no Titania dwelt there; but long ago, where there are now some ruinous remains of old houses, and an uncouth new one, stood the first frame house of the lower valley of the Housatonic. It was inhabited by the last Indian who maintained the dignity of a Chief, and from him passed to the first missionary to the tribe. There Kirkland, the late honoured President of Harvard College, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time, who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it; to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty matters of her converse ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the best part of the teaching wasn't in the books. Some of the students were queer and uncouth when they came, the boys eating with their knives in the fashion of the farm; some of the brightest girls in ill- fitting clothes—perfect guys they'd be thought in the city. But there were others of quite different manner, and from them and from professors who had seen the world, we learned ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... had to be content with four participators in his funeral. The remaining sailor held strangely aloof; his face turning through a prism of curious colours; his body swaying in uncouth jerks. As the fifth corpse toppled over the rail, this fellow threw himself down on the hatch cover, and lay there writhing and screaming in a torment ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of the favourite; "I have received my silver staff, you see!" That was an uncouth impertinence, for assuredly M. de Vivonne had not owed this dignity to my favour. The siege of Candia, and a thousand other distinguished actions, in which he had immortalised himself, called him to this exalted position, which I dare to say ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the treasury made progress; and Christabel began to feel as if her pupils were not beyond her management, as at first she had feared. Collectively they were less uncouth and bearish, not so noisy at their meals, nor so needlessly rude to one another; and the habit of teasing Elizabeth whenever there was nothing else to do was greatly lessened. Indeed Sam did not plague her himself, nor let his ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his horizon interested Allen greatly; the rougher and more uncouth they were the more he admired them. They were figures in the Great Experiment, no matter how sordid or contemptible Harwood pronounced them. He was always looking for "types" and "Big" Jordan, the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... these flooded prairies; curious birds, too, jerked and wriggled among these reedy masses, and we heard human-like voices and unearthly sounds, with splash, guggle, jupp, as if rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts. At one time something came near us, making a splashing like that of a canoe or hippopotamus; thinking it to be the Makololo, we got up, listened, and shouted; then discharged a gun several times; but the noise continued without intermission for an hour. After a damp, cold night we set ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... ruddy complexions were toned down by paling colors, and sallow skins found their ochre hue mysteriously neutralized. Angular shapes were draped so gracefully that unsymmetrical sharpness disappeared; too ample forms exchanged their air of uncouth corpulence for a well-defined roundness; low statures seemed to spring up to a nobler altitude, and women of masculine height sunk into feminine proportions. In short, Mademoiselle Melanie was not a mantua-maker, or milliner,—she was the genius of taste, the artful ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... weasels, and opossums fared sumptuously. Even for the common armadillo (Dasypus villosus) it was a season of affluence, for this creature is very adroit in capturing mice. This fact might seem surprising to anyone who marks the uncouth figure, toothless gums, and the motions—anything but light and graceful—of the armadillo and perhaps fancying that, to be a dexterous mouser, an animal should bear some resemblance in habits and structure to the felidas. But animals, like men, are compelled to adapt themselves ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the afternoon heats. But you rapidly outlived this scene, and now the broad plains of Hungary lay before your gaze. Speeding over the contracted domains of the Tokay, you entered upon the Sarmatian wastes, where the wild vines fought for life with the icy soil and the chill winds of the desert. Uncouth proprietors urged on the unwilling peasants to the acrid press, and rolled out barrels of the 'Rackcheekzi' and the 'Quiteenough-thankzi' vintage, curiously labeled to a New York destination. Soon you beheld Water Street, and long low cellars, where groups of boys cleansed now ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... selling prickly pears, a most delicious tropical fruit. The man soon cut a few open for me, and I found them truly refreshing. To any one who has not yet tasted a prickly pear, there is yet an epicurean luxury in store. The fruit grows plentifully in the East, where you will frequently see an uncouth, impenetrable, cactus-like plant growing by the wayside hedge in a dry, rocky soil, its great succulent leaves bristling with long, formidably sharp thorns, and around the edges and upon these thick leaves are attached most delicately an oval reddish-yellow ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... be pleasant—that lakes must of necessity be beautiful. I have such a feeling, but not now so strongly as formerly. Such an idea should be kept for use in Europe, and never brought over to America with other traveling gear. The lakes in America are cold, cumbrous, uncouth, and uninteresting—intended by nature for the conveyance of cereal produce, but not for the comfort of traveling men and women. So we gave up our plan of traversing the lake, and, passing back into Canada by the suspension ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... to the select few, "the saving remnant," who really knew what was good for the country. Here much latitude of expression was allowed, as the paper was not directly responsible for what these gentlemen said. They wrote of the way in which the dignity of a great party had been destroyed by the uncouth and talkative Westerner who had been lucky enough to secure the nomination. They felt that they had been shamed in the face of the world, and more than once asked the burning and painful question, "What will Europe ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... characters, the dialectic subtlety, the Attic purity, the luminous order, the exquisite urbanity; instead of which they find tautology, obscurity, self-sufficiency, sermonizing, rhetorical declamation, pedantry, egotism, uncouth forms of sentences, and peculiarities in the use of words and idioms. They are unable to discover any unity in the patched, irregular structure. The speculative element both in government and education is superseded by a narrow economical or religious vein. The grace and cheerfulness ...
— Laws • Plato
... of these savages that they considered a favourable journey impossible without this uncouth ceremony. It was at this portage that their enemies had ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... clansmen again rallying under the name of Stevenson. A story would not be told so often unless it had some base in fact; nor (if there were no bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the Stevensons) would that extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so much repeated in the legends of the Children ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire from a huge pile in the back yard. After heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same tone as if he were speaking to his ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crowded these unhappy captives into the holds of their ships, to carry home as evidence of the reality of their discoveries, and to be sold as slaves. These savages are described by those who saw them in Portugal as of shapely form and gentle manner, though uncouth and even dirty in person. They wore otter skins, and their faces were marked with lines. The description would answer to any of the Algonquin tribes of the eastern coast. Among the natives seen on the coast there was ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... here say that my ear is not sufficiently attuned nor my mind accustomed to the subtleties of German for me to offer any judgment on the prosody of Wagner's librettos. So far as I can understand them, they are uncouth enough. On the other hand, dramatically they are admirably constructed; and when we compare the words with the completed musical setting we can see how the drama was, so to speak, always latent; the words are as an invisible writing, on which the music is poured like a liquid, and ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... gentleman, an' the son of a gentleman, too—of a good old fambly. It'll be a very gratifyin' thing, too, fer ye to know that Richard's father was a Councillor of Glendow. So now, dear, give up that uncouth Frenelle boy, an' take ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... imagination to convert them into a series of floating towers, castles, churches, obelisks, and pyramids, or a snowy range of Alpine heights. No pencil, an observer has remarked, has ever given any thing like the true effect of an ice berg. In a picture they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea; while their chief beauty and grandeur—their slow stately motion, the whirling of the snow about their summits, and the fearful crackling of their parts—they cannot give. The ice of the bergs is compact and solid, or ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... reason for being a school teacher, and that was, he was a cripple. Like the uncouth Richard, he had been sent into the world but half made up, and a club foot, of immense proportions, rendered locomotion so great a task that he was compelled, per force, to choose some occupation by which he could earn a living without the ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... master: undoubtedly from Cohinus; and that from Cohen. It would be endless to enumerate all the instances which might be brought of this nature. Of this, I think, I am assured, that whoever will consider the uncouth names both of Deities, and men, as well as of places, in the light recommended; and attend to the mythology transmitted concerning them; will be able by these helps to trace them to their original meaning. It is, I think, plain, that what the Grecians ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... accentuated, and as they were so much nearer to the bank, and occasionally took walks on shore, they saw it all more clearly. Sam was much interested in the foreign troops. Their uniforms looked strange and uncouth. ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... brought by Talleyrand in a letter which said: "Two young men have lately brought me strong recommendations. One is gentlemanly and appears to have the qualifications you desire in a secretary; the other is uncouth to a degree, but I think I can discern in him sparks of the fire of genius." The duke's reply was brief: "Send ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... ten years, to the day of Socrates' death, they were together almost constantly. Plato died aged eighty-one, and for fifty years he had lived but to record the dialogues of Socrates. It was curiosity that first attracted this fine youth to the old man—Socrates was so uncouth that he was amusing. Plato was interested in politics, and like most Athenian youths, was intent on having a good time. However, he was no rowdy, like Alcibiades: he was suave, gracious, and elegant in all of his acts. He had been taught by the Sophists and the desire of his life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... compliment I shall pay you—the rage was almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour—the battle cannot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and their professional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew Lieutenant Bowling ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hastily to you once this evening, and I am afraid, rather rudely. But you know I am but an uncouth Milton manufacturer; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... foremost men were in view, a group of three or four, with their dogs following at heel soberly enough. Their torches flung grotesque shadows on the trees, and distorted their figures into uncouth semblances. He could not recognize them, yet they seemed familiar. Those two in front—was it——? Yes, by God! Like a fiend he sprang from his lair and rushed at von Rittenheim, as if from the very bowels of the rock. His ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... no syllable of the lengthy tale Of honours: and the name which men have read Upon the sacred temples of the gods, And lofty arches built of hostile spoils, On desolate sands here marks his lowly grave With characters uncouth, such as the glance Of passing traveller or Roman ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket on his back, seemingly full of weeds,—the rope which supported it was tied across his chest, and he clasped ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do. Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Diggs must ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... happy days. Many a man has to serve and wait ere he can awaken love in her who is to him the one woman in the world. Many a woman has to wait and wonder and face distress. Then, too, till the stage of mutual acknowledgment is reached love makes men and women awkward. They do uncouth, crude, and clumsy things. They get into muddles. They make mistakes. It would seem that some delicate process of mutual adjustment is often necessary before two souls can really find each other, and while the stumbling preliminary days last, love is often a torture as well ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... adjoyned Vowels, but in a peculiar Voice or Breath; and when you would have a Deaf Person to say Tafel or Swartz, you shall hear from him nothing else but Te. a. ef. e. el. or Es. we. a. er. te. zet. which is very uncouth, nor can you easily mend it: But by this Method, so soon as ever they know their Letters, they begin to read; for to read is only to pronounce ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman |
