"Offish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good p'int now and then," remarked Hiram to himself. "Now I see what made Mandy so durned offish. Wall, she won't have any excuse in the future. I guess I kin ask her a straight question when I git good and ready, Mother Hawkins." And he struck the horse such a violent blow with the whip that ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... bark to a white-oak," muttered Jehu to himself. "Guess I'll try him on t'other side, seein' he's so offish." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... strawberry canning maybe and it so happens that nobody sees them do this but Fanny. And when this does happen they don't even have to mortify themselves by calling her. She just comes of her own accord, forgetting the cruel snubbings. She fixes that stand-offish person as comfortable as can be, makes them laugh even, and telephones to the doctor. Then she rolls up her sleeves and without so much as an apron has those strawberries scientifically canned and that messy kitchen ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... within half a league of the town, a high peaked hill, like a sugar-loaf; bearing N.E. by E. by the compass, which is the best mark to know this place by, when the weather is clear. This is a good place for refreshments, having hens, cocoa-nuts, and goats in abundance, and plenty offish, together with excellent water springing from the rock; but we had to pay seventy dollars, a cloth vest, a fowling-piece, a mirror, and a sword, for leave to provide ourselves with water, and all too little to satisfy the governor, who, after receiving our money and giving us leave, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... girl a polite bow and, not wishing to show himself stand-offish, took the glass which she mixed and handed to ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... feeling it—as they sat stiffly in the leatherette-lined tonneau. Miranda was in starched linen, destitute of all ornament, a dark red ribbon at her throat the only touch of color, looking extremely efficient and, as Sam whispered to Mormon, "a bit stand-offish." He wanted to add, "'count of the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... an' these lads chasin' cows' tails are the salt o' the earth. They'll go farther with you an' stick longer than anybody else you ever met up with. Once they know you an' like you. But they'll be right offish with you for a while. Kinda polite an' distant, I expect. S-some overbearin' g-guy will start runnin' on you, knowin' it'll be safe. It'll be up to you to m-make it mighty onsafe for him. Go through to a finish that once an' the ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Chestermarke at that house, so that he might see the inside of it: indeed, if he had only met with a better reception at the bank, he would have invented such an excuse. But if Gabriel was icily stand-offish, Joseph was openly sneering and contemptuous, and the detective knew that no excuse would give him admittance. Still, there was the outside: he would take a look at that. Starmidge was a young man of ideas as well as of ability, and without exactly shaping his thought ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... done his part as well as his condition would let him, paralyzed by his feelin's — but she acted kinder offish, and I see that sonthin' wuz in the way. I mistrusted at first, it might be Abram's incumbrance, but durin' a conversation I had with her, I see I wuz in the wrong on't. And I could see plain, though some couldn't, that she liked Abram as she did her eyes. Somebody run him down a little one ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... "A little stand-offish to strangers, but wonderfully winning when one really knows him;" i.e., "Which one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... cut short abruptly, and he set her down, his ears tingling. For Sissy, outraged in her sense of dignity as well as in the offish prudery that characterized her, declined to accept patronage as anybody's little sister, and boxed his ears as well as she could in the short ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson |
