"Waspish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... components of the policy group looked not one whit better. Dr. Pilar had been worriedly rubbing at his face, so that his normally neat beard had begun to take on the appearance of a ruptured mohair sofa; Dr. Petrelli, the lean, waspish chemist, was nervously trimming his fingernails with his teeth: and the M.D., Dr. Smathers, had a hangdog expression on his pudgy face and had begun drumming his fingers in a staccato tattoo on his ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and has, on that score, as Mrs. Major F. says, neither rank nor sex," continued the waspish Miss Mann, contradicting the objections she had made to Hector's company only a few minutes before. "I will not submit to this insult, nor occupy the same ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... from that word 'no.'" Then Bell walked out alone for a while, and on her return got her desk and wrote her letter. It was very firm and decisive. As for that wit which should pluck the sting "from such a sharp and waspish word as 'no,'" I fear she had it not. "It will be better to make him understand that I, also, am in earnest," she said to herself; and in this frame of mind she wrote her letter. "Pray do not allow yourself to think that what I have ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... spirit of her own. "That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good man, Ridley, very good-natured I'm sure, and bear with the teasing of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don't tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my nice little hand? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... complete his happiness. Mrs. English, her eyes fairly dancing with delight, could only exclaim at intervals, "Bless the boy!" or, "What a pair of children!" then fondly pass her arm about the waist of Miss. Juno—which was not waspish in girth—or rest her hand upon Paul's shoulder with a show of maternal affection peculiarly grateful to him. It was with difficulty the half-dazed young fellow could keep apart from Miss. Juno. If he found she had wandered into the next room, while he was engaged for a moment, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... madden, lash into fury; fan the flame; add fuel to the flame, pour oil on the fire, oleum addere camino [Lat.]. explode; let fly, fly off; discharge, detonate, set off, detonize^, fulminate. Adj. violent, vehement; warm; acute, sharp; rough, rude, ungentle, bluff, boisterous, wild; brusque, abrupt, waspish; impetuous; rampant. turbulent; disorderly; blustering, raging &c v.; troublous^, riotous; tumultuary^, tumultuous; obstreperous, uproarious; extravagant; unmitigated; ravening, inextinguishable, tameless; frenzied &c (insane) 503. desperate &c (rash) 863; infuriate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was a little man— I'll sketch him if I can, For he clung to mine and me Like the old man of the sea; And in spite of taunt and scoff We could not pitch him off, For the cross-grained, waspish elf Cared for no ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Clifford Du Bois in the office of the Inquirer, and reflecting how little his private telephone message had availed him, was in a waspish, ironic frame of mind. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... give orders for her husband's reception, her third maid of honour, Pippa Serbonella, a waspish, deceitful creature whom Celio had never liked, flung wide the curtain of the window and cried: ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... well of the marksmanship of considerable bodies of the Russian infantry. Personally, I can say they shoot as well as I have any desire to have men shoot when aiming at me. Twice on Friday I was sent scurrying off exposed ridges by the waspish whisper of bullets coming from a Russian position jutting from the south shore ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... came from Germany!"—the falconers were in despair, and Churchill saw that the fault was his; and it looked so like cockney sportsmanship! If Horace had been in a towering rage, it would have been well enough; but he only grew pettish, snappish, waspish: now none of those words ending in ish become a gentleman; ladies always think so, and Lady Cecilia now thought so, and Helen thought so too, and Churchill saw it, and he grew pale instead of red, and that looks ugly ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... neighbours fled the haunted castle as a lazar-house. Once in possession of a family secret, he felt himself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer and to flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover, he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trained journalist. So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, that neither man nor woman could deny him confidence. And, as vinegar flowed in his veins for blood, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... addition to the knowledge of so much else, in his mind,—this care, in addition to so many other cares, ever weighing upon his heart. Little did jealous, intriguing Lee know of these things; petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less firmly established would have lost its hold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... shaking your head at the follies of Fashion; you now exhaust that portion of the day in posting to the opera, or shaking your heels at Willis's rooms, and your elbows at the Union Club. If I felt pleased at finding you at home, how was my satisfaction increased, by hearing from a yellow-bellied waspish footman that you were busy with the first tragedian of the day? Good! said I to myself, this must be Kemble: there is no man better able to appreciate my labours—I'll break in upon them without ceremony. On approaching your worship's door, I heard the words ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... man, even if you are my uncle! Oh, you don't know how often I've wanted to tell you so too,—always prying into this, asking questions about that, finding fault, forever cross and snappish and suspicious. A waspish, crabbed old wretch, that's what you are! I just ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... as if he had no care in the world. He hummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to examining his physiognomy ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Ramon went on impassively; "I am content that the island should remain English. It will never again be Spanish, nor do I wish that it should. But our little, waspish friend there"—he lifted one thin, brown hand to the sign of the Buckatoro Journal—"his paper is doing much mischief. I think the admiral or the governor will commit him to jail. He is going to run away and take his paper to Kingston; I myself ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... man's ordinary tools of torture; he who had saved him this very day from certain death in the water; this fellow of the flaming red hair, was in truth so different from other men, that they hunted him, they hated him, and therefore they were sending their waspish and invisible messengers of death after him. For his own safety, for the life of the man on his back, Alcatraz gave up ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... emotion. The big man simply allowed his astonishment, dread, or whatever the feeling was which moved him, to ooze forth in a cold and deathly perspiration which robbed his cheeks of colour, and cast a bluish shadow over his narrow and retreating temples; while the thin and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was), shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my part had not been held in check ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... out of the hole with a waspish swiftness, though there was a wild, frightened look in his eyes; and as he advanced towards the barricade he drew out a bulldog pistol and held it ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of truce. The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders. They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the waspish effusions of the daily press. The magistrates remained calm, and took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld. That statesman, while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, became more and more odious ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mille something, when I passed him about two hours afterwards in the corridor, prepared to go and take my German lesson in the Rue Crecy. Never was a better little man, in some points, than M. Paul: never, in others, a more waspish little despot. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... than any ten families in the place; and so truly did he inherit this family peculiarity that he had not been a year in the government of the province before he was universally denominated William the Testy. His appearance answered to his name. He was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentleman; such a one as may now and then be seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His face was broad but his features were sharp, his cheeks were scorched ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that wrote that letter never said a word to me about this boat, or any other; and I did not buy her for him," replied Dory, startled by the statement of the waspish young man. ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... Kate, the heiress's portionless cousin; and, moreover, Grace herself shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In such cases sons are often sulky or fiery, mothers are alternately manoeuvring and waspish, and the portionless young lady often lies awake at night and cries a good deal. We are getting used to these things now, just as we are used to eclipses of the moon, which no longer set us howling and beating tin kettles. We ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... after, in his admirable apology for rhyme, had smashed Mr. Campian and his "eight several kinds of classical numbers," that the matter was finally settled, and the English tongue left to go the road on which Heaven had started it. So that we may excuse Raleigh's answering somewhat waspish to some quotation of Spenser's from the three letters of "Immerito ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... daughter. How true, how unerringly true to human nature is this picture of the Iden household; how delicately felt and rendered to a hair is his picture of the father's sluggish, masculine will, pricked ineffectually by the waspish tongue of feminine criticism. Further, we not only have the family's idiosyncrasies, their habits, mental atmosphere, and domestic story brought before us in a hundred pages, easily and instinctively by the hand of the artist, but we have the whole book steeped in ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... some small lord, that other proving shy Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head. She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of emoluments, seeking for attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook wholesome justice for tyranny, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman |
