"Splay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like two double jugs," or else no dugs, in that other extreme, bloody fallen fingers, she have filthy, long unpared nails, scabbed hands or wrists, a tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splay-footed, "as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist," gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster, an oaf imperfect, her whole complexion ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... place of him. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first glance repulsive. I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign, with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary splay feet—in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted. I had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicest Wits and Beauties. It is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name: As fast as they called the cats, they came There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a stroke; and ceased to exist as Potsdam Grenadiers. Colonels, Captains, all the Officers known to be of merit, were advanced, at least transferred. Of the common men, a minority, of not inhuman height and of worth otherwise, were formed into a new Regiment on the common terms: the stupid splay-footed eight-feet mass were allowed to stalk off whither they pleased, or vegetate on frugal pensions; Irish Kirkman, and a few others neither knock-kneed nor without head, were appointed HEYDUCS, that is, porters to the King's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... her; and wanted to stop her mouth. She might be going to say anything. She overpowered me so that I actually dwindled—into the gawkiness of extreme youth. I became a goggle-eyed, splay-footed boy again and made a boy's desperate effort after a recovery at one stroke of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Louis in France, he wasn't all he should have been, and there were those in his own day who didn't entirely approve of him. But it wasn't because of his dogs. However, if you mention King Charles now, it is a dog you think of—a small, eary dog, with somewhat splay feet and a seventeenth-century monarchical preference for the society of ladies and the softest cushion. Maybe the royal gentleman didn't deserve anything better of posterity; but, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... bazaar were shabby people for the most part, whose black masks nobody would feel a curiosity to remove. You could see no more of their figures than if they had been stuffed in bolsters; and even their feet were brought to a general splay uniformity by the double yellow slippers which the wives of true believers wear. But it is in the Greek and Armenian quarters, and among those poor Christians who were pulling figs, that you see the beauties; and a man of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as profoundly quiet and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... begun to flow back into it. Mary Magdalen had brought a dog with her—a yellow dog of unknown ancestry, of shamefaced demeanor, a ropy tail, splay feet, and a rolling eye; named, she and heaven alone knew why, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... than Hypsaea, when you survey such parts as are deformed. [You may cry out,] "O what a leg! O, what delicate arms!" But [you suppress] that she is low-hipped, short-waisted, with a long nose, and a splay foot. A man can see nothing but the face of a matron, who carefully conceals her other charms, unless it be a Catia. But if you will seek after forbidden charms (for the [circumstance of their being forbidden] makes you mad ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... to the Milby mind that a canting evangelical parson, who would take tea with tradespeople, and make friends of vulgar women like the Linnets, should have so much the air of a gentleman, and be so little like the splay-footed Mr. Stickney of Salem, to whom he approximated so closely in doctrine. And this want of correspondence between the physique and the creed had excited no less surprise in the larger town of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the doorway. "Well, Steve! I'm glad you come. I just want you to see the kind of goin's on there is here." Charles cleared his throat and stuck his thumb in his vest. "F'r instance, this mornin', I sittin' right there in that corner, not troublin' nobody, when up gets that splay-footed, sprawlin', lumberin' bull-calf of an Oscar, an' that mischievious, sawed-off little monkey of a Harry, and they goes to pullin' and tusslin', and they jes' walks up and down on me, same's if I was a flight of steps. Now, you know, Steve, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Risingh, who succeeded to the command of New Sweden, looms largely in ancient records as a gigantic Swede, who, had he not been rather knock-kneed and splay-footed, might have served for the model of a Samson or a Hercules. He was no less rapacious than mighty, and withal, as crafty as he was rapacious, so that there is very little doubt that, had he lived some four or five centuries since, he would have figured as one of those wicked giants, who took ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wolf did rear, So he was dry-nurs'd by a bear, That fed him with the purchas'd prey Of many a fierce and bloody fray; 170 Bred up, where discipline most rare is, In military Garden Paris. For soldiers heretofore did grow In gardens, just as weeds do now, Until some splay-foot politicians 175 T'APOLLO offer'd up petitions For licensing a new invention They'd found out of an antique engine, To root out all the weeds that grow In public gardens at a blow, 180 And leave th' herbs standing. Quoth Sir Sun, My friends, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... on his finger as I entered, and without recollecting to remove his hat, he made a step or two towards me with his splay, creaking boots. With a quick glance at ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Grace sent Libby at daybreak for Dr. Mulbridge; and the young man, after leading out his own mare to see if her lameness had abated, ruefully put her back in the stable, and set off to Corbitant with the splay-foot at a rate of speed unparalleled, probably, in the animal's recollection of a long and useful life. In the two anxious days that followed, Libby and Grace were associated in the freedom of a common interest ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her when I was at home—a great, gawky, carroty creature, with a foot like a pair of bellows." Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mahogany and French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,— great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly related to the dock-warehouses ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... window embraced a view of part of the gulf, including the entrance, and a strip of jungle-clad country running right down to the water's edge; while beyond these two points the outlook was restricted by the outer edges of the splay in which the window was built. From the same cause, also, Frobisher was unable to see the ground close enough to the wall to judge whether the fort was surrounded by a moat or a dry ditch of any description, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... said, "on the ground that the island of Funicula was brought under the Dodopeloponnesian sceptre on September 11th, 1405, by Blagoslav the Splay-fingered, from whom it was wrested on February 3rd, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... are a-going to do in this life is about like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions. Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for me. Don't nobody have to foreclose ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly in Tennessee, but extending up across what is now the Kentucky line, and taking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay, reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so far away, may have got its name from the same man who christened Reelfoot; at least ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... person my eyes ever beheld, either before I practised or since; of a middle stature; broad forehead, beetle-browed, thick shoulders, flat nosed, full lips, down-looked, black curling stiff hair, splay-footed; to give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments, was much addicted to debauchery, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... face hung, While the music clash'd and swell'd, And the restless child to the silk skirt clung Unnoticed tho' unrepelled. They've paled, those rosebud lips that I kist, That slim waist has thickened rather, And the cub has the sprawling mutton fist, And the great splay foot of the father. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... baggy trousers alike sweeping the cobbles as he shambles forward]. (C.G. genially.) Ah, there you are, TOM, my lad. Bring out dear old Bogey, and show it to my friend here. [Boy leads out a rusty roan Rosinante, high in bone, and low in flesh, with prominent hocks, and splay hoofs, which stumble gingerly over the cobbles.] (Patting the horse affectionately.) Ah, poor old Bogey, he doesn't like these lumpy stones, does he? Not used to them, Sir. My stable-yard at Wickham-in-the-Wold, is as smoothly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... flaman); its eyes were red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin emerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its feet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and of the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick's used to be at Toulouse in the days of yore. About its neck it wore a gold collar, round which were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... as sure as I am a sinner,' said Mr. Bertram. The Dominie groaned deeply, uncrossed his legs, drew in the huge splay foot which his former posture had extended, placed it perpendicularly, and stretched the other limb over it instead, puffing out between whiles huge volumes of tobacco smoke. 'What needs ye groan, Dominie? I am sure ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev. Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his spoon—which were many—were caught on the round of his black waistcoat, which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... openings were splayed in the thickness of the walls, at an angle of about 45. In the doorway, in the east end of the building, the greater width of the opening is on the inside, a rather unusual arrangement; in the window, on the north side, this arrangement is reversed, the splay being outward. On the south side are indications of a similar opening, but at the present time the wall is so broken out that no well defined jamb can be traced, and it is impossible to determine whether the splayed opening was used or not. ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... savageness. Guided by that instinct which came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on the fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... this point Smoots Beste set down his splay foot. He would undertake to deliver the letter, but he objected to the company of the coloured voor-loopers or the Kaffir driver. He was firm upon that and, finding his most honeyed persuasions of no avail, Bough said no more. He would pay off the niggers ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in the station was in a muddle—heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... story appears not only in Denmark, but in England, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was known in India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the ballad of William ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... round-headed opening there stand two small shafts with bases and elaborately carved capitals but without any abaci, supporting a large roll moulding, and these are all repeated inside at the inner face of a deep splay. In one of these windows not only are the capitals covered with intertwined ribbon-work, but each shaft is covered with interknotted circles enclosing flowers, and there is a band of interlacing work round the head of ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... lip, and here and there A rugged wart with grisly hairs behung; Her breasts shrunk up, her nails and fingers long; Her left leant on a staff, in her right hand She always carried her enchanting wand. Splay-footed, beyond nature, every part So patternless deformed, 'twould puzzle art To make her counterfeit; only her tongue, Nature had that most exquisitely strung, Her oily language came so smoothly from her, And her quaint action did so well ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... see yourself not long ago, in Fraser's Magazine, classed nominatim by an emphatic earnest man, not without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity,—among the chief Heresiarchs of the—world? Perfectly right. Fraser was very anxious to know what I thought of the Paper,—"by an entirely unknown man in the country." I counseled "that there was something in him, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson |
