Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Seedy" Quotes from Famous Books



... afraid I haven't." Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There, standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of the world would have most certainly described as "seedy." ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... expect she's all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about it, so I ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... by the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. Told me he was President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration Company, with a capital of ten millions. I guessed that he was the board of directors and the capital stock and the exploring and ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... earn a sketchy livelihood by enduring with cherubic smiles the continuous maledictions of the establishment. There he soothed his hours of servitude by dreams of vast ambitions. He would become the manager of a great hotel—not a contemptible hostelry where commercial travellers and seedy Germans were indifferently bedded, but one of those white palaces where milords (English) and millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night for a bedroom and five louis for a glass of beer. Now, in order to derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon a knowledge of English ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... had spent a seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign, which had been unjustifiably allowed, by foreign Powers, to drain Egypt of her gold and life-blood—some 25,000 men since the beginning of the Servian prelude—not only caused "abundant sorrow" to the capital, but ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... and stroll leisurely down the long incline. The whole town tips that way. A variety of more or less quaint vehicles move about—cabriolets drawn by donkeys and ponies; sedan chairs; a species of easy-chair on wheels, with a wooden apron, and propelled by a boy or a decayed footman in seedy livery with bibulous habits written on his face. Something of a similar sort was seen at the Centennial, yet utterly unlike this, notwithstanding a resemblance in principle. These invalid go-carts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... looking rather seedy now, while holding down my claim, And my grub it isn't always served the best, And the mice play shyly round me as I lay me down to rest In my little old sod shanty on my claim. Oh, the hinges are of leather and the windows ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... flat below. He was a ready-dressed gentleman, still stylish if a bit seedy, and his large family overflowed down into the next ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... if your shore toggery is a bit seedy," he said. "You'll soon be blooming out in a bran-new sailor's rig, and be ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... stronger. I tell you, my dear, I know a dozen women who could discount any soldier that ever fought in the Crimean wars, for downright heroism and pluck. Where do you find the man who is willing to wear shabby clothes and old boots and a seedy hat that his boys may go fine as fiddles? Where do you find a man who will get up cold mornings and make the fire, tramp to work through snow, pick his way through flooding rain, weather northeast blasts ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... "I am afraid the boy isn't very fit—Jack wires that he seems seedy, and that they have got a man over from York. Don't be anxious, it's probably nothing much—but I think I'll run up ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... the crown was well ceded by this time, and the poet's remark seems at this time far grander and more apropos than any language of the writer could be: so it is given here,—viz., "Uneasy lies the head that wears a seedy ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... in the Mitre I see (but only in imagination) Johnson and Goldsmith talking over the quaint philosophy of wine and letters till three o'clock in the morning, finishing their three or four bottles of port, and wondering why they were a little seedy ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... brings him in just enough to scrub along on, and he joins that hungry-eyed, trembly-fingered fringe of margin pikers that hangs around every hotel broker's branch in town, takin' a timid flier now and then, but tappin' the free lunch hard and reg'lar. You know the kind,—seedy hasbeens, with their futures ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... I got my soul to bless; And I'd feel extremely seedy, Languishing in vile duresse. Therefore listen, ruthless taylzeour, Take my steed and armour free, Pawn them at thy Hebrew uncle's, And I'll work the rest ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... some years ago—when heads now grey were brown, when eyes now dim were bright—the Strand was in its usual state of turmoil. Carriage followed carriage. Seedy clerks hustled past portly merchants—not their own masters, bien entendu, but those of other seedy clerks. Carriages and foot-passengers were alike going westward. All were leaving behind them the day and the busy city—some after a few ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... discovered that the seedy lounger about our office had carefully taken down the cipher telegram addressed to Burkhill, I was indignant, for it was well known that one of the most important duties which the telegraph companies insist upon is the inviolability of the messages intrusted to their ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled—oh! the torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to dinner in the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in a drawing-room? ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... squire's distant manner was that Mr. Temple, though a rich man according to his own account, had a somewhat seedy look. The squire was afraid he intended to ask for help on the score of old friendship. It was with a hesitating voice, therefore, that ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... the next morning, the 11th, our destination being Lubuagan, the capital of the Kalinga country. We had a long, hard day before us. As I was about to mount, I noticed that Doyle, Mr. Forbes's groom, looked seedy, and learned that Bubud had broken loose in the night and gone the rounds of the herd, kicking every animal in it before he could be caught, and so robbing poor Doyle of a good part of his sleep. After ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... of her boot on the deck floor. "It's a perfect shame. And that horrible old man, he's so seedy and common —just think of it—and spoiling all ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... he was looking a little seedy before he went. Well, well, that's too bad. Right in the May trade, too. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... possessed a cockatoo with a great musical reputation, but I never heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for only 2 ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... sublime confidence in his charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... Jamie," said Mary, laughing; and then, looking at him, with sudden feeling: "But how seedy ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... must have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... down-stairs. Suddenly there came a bang! bang! bang! at the knocker; and then in an instant another rattling series of knocks, as if a tethered donkey were trying to kick in the panel. After all our efforts for silence it was exasperating. I rushed to the door to find a seedy looking person just raising his hand to commence a fresh bombardment. "What on earth's the matter?" I asked, only I may have been a little more emphatic. "Pain in the jaw," said he. "You needn't make such a noise," said I; "other people are ill besides you." ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... Mr. Gibney was on his way to the Marigold Cafe for breakfast, he was mildly interested, while passing the Embarcadero warehouse, to note the presence of fully a dozen seedy-looking gentlemen of undoubted Hebraic antecedents, congregated in a circle just outside the warehouse door. There was an air of suppressed excitement about this group of Jews that aroused Mr. Gibney's curiosity; so he decided to cross over and investigate, being of the opinion that possibly ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... of other writers, because this was his one way of accounting for his want of success. He did not write books, to be sure. He only wrote poetical advertisements. But they were printed and paid for, and this gave him a sort of prestige among his less lucky friends. He was seedy; only moderately clean, and wholly unshaven, thus avoiding, by one happy invention, both soap and the barber. Fierce he was to look at, with his rugged beard and eyebrows, and fierce in his resentment of the world's indifference. A Christmas invitation to the Grapewine's made his eyes ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... outer man, as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white at the seams—which Bob vouchsafed to wear, with looks of dim suspicion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... weather and coarse handling, and been spotted and smutched, and creased and torn, and every way defaced. I had often wished that I might have a pretty painting made from it, before it should be spoiled past copying. So here, I thought, shall be my introduction to my fly-in-amber artist, of the seedy tent and the romantic miniatures. So pocketing my picture, I hied me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... loyal Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness, too, and hardly knew what he was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... hear it—though you look pretty seedy this morning. You know you really work too hard, Anstice. I assure you your predecessor didn't take half the trouble with ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... a clever, seedy vagabond, who borrows money or obtains credit by his songs, witticisms, or ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... go nine chapters. I have been a little seedy; and the two last that I have written seem to me on a false venue; hence the smallness of the batch. I have now, I hope, in the three last sent, turned the corner, with no ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... country clothes, brown knickerbockers and gaiters, and looked something like a stout and seedy gamekeeper ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... carry off all our gold and silver, which eviscerates the banks; the banks squeeze the merchants, to the last drop of blood; and the merchants perish in the process, carrying with them hosts of mechanics, farmers, and professional men.—Not so, bellows a fourth philosopher, perhaps a little more seedy than the rest; it is all the work of "the infernal credit system,"—of the practice of making money out of that which is only a promise to pay money,—out of that which purports to have a real equivalent in some vault, when no such equivalent exists, and is, therefore, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... I demanded the handglass, gave one look at myself, and I was inclined to let it slide off the bed to the floor, a la Camille, only Amelie would not have seen the joke. I did look old and seedy. But what of that? Of course Amelie does not know yet that I am like the "Deacon's One Hoss Shay"—I may look dilapidated, but so long as I do not absolutely drop ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... Yesterday I felt rather seedy, having a touch of Cuban fever, my only unpleasant reminiscence of the Santiago campaign. Accordingly, I spent the afternoon in the house lying on the sofa, with a bright fire burning and Mother in the rocking-chair, with her knitting, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... ones. Well, that was the beginning; only the beginning. After that he held on for a while, breaking the bread of life to a skedaddling flock, and then he bolted. The next known of him, three years later, he enlisted in your regiment, a smart but seedy ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... My parents left me a moderate fortune, and I have travelled pretty well and pretty constantly all over the world during the last twelve or fifteen years. How did I come to Needley? Well, you can call it luck, or something more than that, whichever way it appeals to you. I was feeling seedy, a little off-color, and I started down for a rest and lay-off in Maine. I happened to ask a man in Portland if he knew of a quiet place. He meant to be humorous, I imagine. He said Needley was the quietest place he knew of. I took him at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... shabby and old-fashioned. Yes, you remember, not without a dull kind of pang, that it is wearing out. You have a neighbor, perhaps, a few miles off, whose conveyance, through the wear of many years, has become remarkably seedy; and every time you meet it you think that there you see your own, as it will some day be. Every dog has his day: but the day of the rational dog is overclouded in a fashion unknown to his inferior fellow-creature; it is overclouded by the anticipation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... time he is a hack author—writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page—edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to his ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... to smoke and to inspect him critically: "You're a bit seedy and a bit weedy, Clive, but you'll come around with feeding. You're really all right. I'd have you myself if I was ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... was seedy and shabby, but with a different seediness and shabbiness from that of Heron Hall; for there was an attempt to conceal its loss of freshness with antimacassars, large in size and hideous of pattern. A grim and ugly portrait of Mr. John ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... no!" said her cousin in a joyous voice. "This is the most cheering thing I've seen for many moons, Adrien. Eh, what? Oh, I beg pardon, are you seedy?" he added glancing at her. "Oh, certainly, I'll ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... small importance who stand and listen at the sides was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just handed a letter to the crier, before he caught ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... whiskers, all heavy, and black as night. He was attired in loose fustian clothes with a red handkerchief wound round his throat, and a low slouching hat—one of those called wide-awake—partially concealed his features. By his side stood another man in plain, dark, rather seedy clothes, the coat outrageously long. He wore a cloth hat, whose brim hid his face, and he was smoking a cigar. Both men were slightly built and under middle height. This one was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?" demanded Valentin, stopping short. And on Newman's assenting, "Ah no, ah no," he went on with a smile. "You are quite wrong, my dear fellow; you needn't ...
— The American • Henry James

... and older," said May cheerfully. "Think of my responsibilities! There's the baby! And then Alexander's been seedy. And we aren't as rich as we should like to be; you of all people must know that. And there's going to be an election and our seat's very shaky. So the cares of the world ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... About Ipswich there is a very appropriate old-fashioned tone, and much of the proper country town air. The streets seem dingy enough—the hay waggon is encountered often. The "Great White Horse," which is at the corner of several streets, is a low, longish building—with a rather seedy air. But to read "Boz's" description of it, we see at once that he was somewhat overpowered by its grandeur and immense size—which, to us in these days of huge hotels, seems odd. It was no doubt a large posting house ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... the hot weather when my friend Blake, who had been very seedy, thought that I might try to get a few days' leave and join him in a small shooting expedition into the jungles of southern India, where he was sure he would recover his lost strength and vitality, and so face the coming hot weather with a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... house in Farringdon Street, not far from the Circus, stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the "Ludgate News Rooms" occupied the third and fourth floors, and that the admission to the same was one penny. We were a seedy company that every morning crowded into these rooms: clerks, shopmen, superior artisans, travellers, warehousemen—all of us out of work. Most of us were young, but with us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these latter were always the saddest and most silent of this little whispering ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... appearance of sceptics, and members of the medical profession from the country. Many of the latter came long distances to satisfy their respective curiosity, or vent their scepticism, as the case might be. As a rule they were long-visaged, not a few were unkempt, and many were downright seedy in wearing apparel. Almost invariably they insisted upon boring the doctor with numberless questions, many of which were idle. The majority displayed ignorance, and it might truthfully be said, they were rude almost without exception. One man ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... the contents. At the Hof Brauerei I once saw a newly arrived Englishman, carrying the usual red guidebook, quit the room for an instant, leaving uncovered his just acquired mass of beer. There came along a seedy-looking old gentleman, evidently a Stammgast. A gleam of satisfaction stole over his wooden features as he espied the open mug. Pausing a moment, he lifted it to his lips and slowly drank the contents. Setting it down empty, with a face mildly radiating satisfaction, he ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... ripe fruit, to make one of dry—this when the peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushels for one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any lack of fruit—beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the static fence rows—the corner of a worm fence furnishing an ideal seat. Further, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... can put it all over that Osage country for straight scenery, but I never saw such a contented-looking place as that big prairie-land was that morning. I've seen it with the tears running down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture meeting, I tell you, it all looked ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... way, and asked if we'd mind excusing him as he had something he wanted to see to before the steamer sailed. At five o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to hustle our bags ashore and start out to look for him. He'd been awfully seedy for a couple of months and when he got left I knew something serious had happened. I found him late that night in the foreign hospital out of his head with a fever. It seems the letter had told him that his girl was going to be married, and half beside ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... prayers of the saints, especially in the rheumatism. Music is employed to excite ecstasy in the saint, who, when in a state of inspiration, tells (on the authority of some departed saint, generally of Seedy Muhamed Seef,) what animal must be sacrificed for the recovery of the patient: a white cock, a red cock, a hen, an ostrich, an antelope, or a goat. The animal is then killed in the presence of the sick, and dressed; the blood, feathers, and ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... said, and she gave her gloved, seedy hand to Ursula. She was not ill-looking, and had a curious insinuating way, very distasteful ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... coat and muffler and looking cold. When he rose and faced him, Denis saw that he also looked paler than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly shaved, and his hair was longer. He might have been called seedy-looking; he might have been Sidney Carton in "The Only Way"; he had always that touch of the dramatic about him that suggested a stage character. He had ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... perhaps for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry in a frenzy up the back-stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and down in a frenzy till half-past one. There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors' clerks, and they all come straight out of DICKENS. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the interpreter on duty? Well, there's a seedy-looking chap over there, who seems up to no good. Go and tell him from me that if he doesn't clear out immediately I'll have him arrested.' I did so. 'Arrest me!' said the man. 'Why, I'm the special commissaire de police entrusted with the ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... The seedy-looking stranger, whose name was Alfred Jingle, was a passenger on the same coach that day and entertained the Pickwickians with marvelous stories of his life in Spain. None of these was true, to be sure, but they were all entered ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... natives. The crowds on the pavement stood four or five deep all the way, and hung in bunches on the trees, some in gay dresses, others naked, brown and glistening against the dusty fig trees, stems, and branches. You saw all types and colours, one or two seedy Europeans amongst them, and Eurasians of all degrees of colour, one, a beautiful girl of about twelve I saw for a second as we passed; she had curling yellow hair and white skin, might have sat for one of Millais pictures, and she looked out from the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... with weakness. "Sir," I said, —But with a mien of dignity The seedy stranger raised his head: "My friends, I'm ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... to him by the coming out of children bearing school satchels. A gentleman with semi-military air, wearing his hat somewhat jauntily on top of a bloated face and figure, met them as he emerged from a side street, and, paternally patting their heads, called them 'little dears;' and, from his seedy dress and unoccupied manner, it was not hard to perceive that he must still be unsuccessful in his search after ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed, mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinee party. So, she concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... she rarely comes to the cabin except to tidy up before meals, and afterwards to tell us exactly everything she has eaten. She seems to have a good appetite and to choose the things that sound nastiest when one is seedy. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... shocking length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... a worse injustice if he married her. Why should he marry her if he doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want it? There she is, perfectly content and happy with her baby. It's been a little seedy lately, but it's absolutely sound. A very fine baby indeed, and Essy knows it. There's nothing ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... Pan, II. 52. (March 8, 1794).—The titular general of the revolutionary army was Ronsin. "Previous to the Revolution he was a seedy author earning his living and reputation by working for the boulevard stalls... One day a person informed him that his staff 'was behaving very badly, acting tyrannically in the most outrageous manner at the theaters and everywhere else, striking women and tearing their bonnets to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... poor, until you simply have to throw up the sponge," said he. "The world judges by appearances. Put your first money and your last into clothes. And never—never—tell a hard-luck story. Always seem to be doing well and comfortably looking out for a chance to do better. The whole world runs from seedy people and whimperers." ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... and your family that I might see them before I die. And look at your daughters; they are dressed in such a shabby way that I am ashamed for my neighbors to see my children's cousins. And look at you with your old seedy, worn suit and your patched shoes; I am ashamed to take you to town day after to-morrow and introduce you to my business associates. What a fool you have been! Now, John, I am not saying this to wound your feelings; ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... raising it by their eagerness to buy. That was his stern duty in the second-hand department. But there had been so many occasions on which he had never done his duty; times when he was tempted to actual defiance of it, when a wistful calculating look in the eyes of some seedy scholar would knock all the moral fibre out of him, and a two and sixpenny book would go for ninepence or a shilling. And such was his conception of loyalty to Rickman's, that he generally paid for these excesses out of his own pocket, so that conscience was satisfied both ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... 'un!" said a seedy dandy, whose love of fancy drinks had made a compromise with his love ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... the business, and spend the whole day gossiping and flirting—"love-shops," I call 'em. There was a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... through and through with grey hairs. The man had a coat with frogged buttons that must have been intended to have a military air when it was new, but which was now much the worse for wear. The coat was so odd as to have caught young Talbot's attention at once. And the man's hat was old and seedy. But there was a look about him as though he were by no means ashamed either of himself or of his present purpose. "He came in a gig," said Talbot to his friend; "for I saw the horse standing at the gate, and the man sitting in ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... generous prescription I dutifully submitted, but even port was powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, and during the Christmas vacation ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... his coat and his hat in his hand, and was introduced. His first thought was one of extreme mortification—three days' beard was on his face. His toilet activities had been limited in number. He knew he felt wretched, seedy, groggy—and looked it. Something in Pearl's manner ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... to whom the Senator spoke was not one who would have attracted any notice from him if it had not been for his knowledge of English. He was a narrow-headed, mean-looking man, with very seedy clothes, and a ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... down slowly, his finger pressed to his chin in thought. His face was worn and haggard. His clothing had taken on a seedy cast not formerly common to him. Apparently things might have been better with him in a financial way. Perhaps he saw a way to mend matters. "Halves?" said he at length, suddenly looking straight ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... strawberries and blueberries, are simply washed and then put to dry. Berries must not be dried too hard; if too much moisture is removed they will not resume their original form when soaked in water. But the material must be dried sufficiently or it will mold. Haven't you often tasted extremely seedy dried berries? They were dried until they rattled. Stop the drying as soon as the berries fail to stain ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... his shoes in the narrow hall and put on his seedy-looking dark overcoat, quite unconscious that Mrs. Fletcher had had the collar mended since he had taken it off. Then he went out into the damp November night, unlit by moon or star. But to Stewart the darkness of night, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I daresay it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit to be locked up. But don't think I don't struggle against it. I do, I do continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove these dreadful ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... There were rows of chairs in front of the windows and along the walls, and in the chairs were the queerest-looking lot of men he had ever seen. He didn't pay any attention to them, though, but went up to the seedy individual behind the desk, and asked him if he could get a bed for the night. "Sure, Mike," the man replied, and Archie signed his name in a dirty book with torn pages. He paid the man ten cents, and asked if he could leave his bundle while he went outside. "Sure, Mike," was again his answer, ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... the companionship of staid practical persons, who on account of his latent worth would have readily countenanced, and with the least opportunity even served him, but he invariably paid his court to adventurers; such creatures, for instance, as seedy 'professors' of one kind or another, who, in the inevitable shawl and threadbare suit of black, were constantly dismounting at the village tavern, with proposals either to 'lecture' on something, or 'teach' somewhat, as the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... not so sure. Maybe I'll be a cowgirl and learn to ride like Kit, and rope a steer like her friend, Seedy Saunders. There are heaps of things I'd like to do. I'd like to meet a western bad ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... bald block, the Washington Monument, and opposite what was of more importance to us, a drove of beeves putting beef on their bones in the seedy grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, we were halted while the New Jersey brigade—some three thousand of them—trudged by, receiving the complimentary fire of our line as they passed. New Jersey is not so far from New York but that the dialects of the two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... venison, which fills the whole house with its perfume while roasting; and an old double-Gloucester cheese, full of jumpers and mites; and after it a bottle of old port, at which he is often joined by the parson, and always by a queer, quiet sort of a tall, thin man, in a seedy black coat, and with a crimson face, bearing testimony to the efficacy of the squire's port and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... perhaps, is too high and mighty to condescend to follow and study him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the like—or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as they were before they were born—what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a pretty figure shall some of ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... a large, seedy-looking man, with the resigned, unexpectant manner of the deaf. Dysart went around the wagon, and the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... that if I called upon Mr. Sands Cox, at his house in Temple Row, some morning early, that gentleman would give me a letter introducing me to the great Leamington physician. I accordingly presented myself as directed, and was shown, by a somewhat seedy-looking old woman—who evidently looked upon me with considerable suspicion—into a small room in the front of the house, where, seated at a writing-table, I found the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... of ten thousand cattle glistened in the sun as they fed inside the John Burt ranch, but owing to his seedy appearance their owner was frequently mistaken for his own hired man. Self-centred, of narrow views, strong prejudices, saving to penuriousness, whatever there was of sentiment, or warm human impulse, in his nature, seemed to have been buried with Bruce's mother. He had not re-married, but this was ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... innumerable car-fares and frequent cups of coffee at wayside lunch-counters. I traveled over miles and miles of territory, by trolley-car, by elevated train and ferry-boat, to Brooklyn, to Harlem, to Jersey City and Newark, only to reach my destination cold and hungry, and to be interviewed by a seedy man with a patent stove-lifter, a shirt-waist belt, a contrivance for holding up a lady's train, or a new-fangled mop—anything, everything that a persistent agent might sell to the spendthrift wife ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, n. a kind of fruit ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... at side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, Clerical ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... a sapient physician, who had the art "to suit his physic to his patients' taste;" so when King Artaxaminous felt a little seedy after a night's debauch, the doctor prescribed to his majesty "to take a morning whet."—W. B. Rhodes, Bombastes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... winter made it almost impossible for the old man to get to Sunday Mass at all; he would do his best, but it was evident, as I could see more plainly in my visits, that he was growing very feeble. I happened to be seedy myself at that time, and did not manage to get out so frequently as before, owing to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... prisoner reserved his defence. He has been seedy, however; principally sick of the family evil, despondency; the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand what is a contrite ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the sea! the open sea! If you are ill, go to sea. If you are fagged, go to sea! If you are used up, seedy, washed-out, miserable, go to sea! Another slice of ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... struck me before, that if I could obtain the services of a few men acquainted with the ways of white men, and who could induce other good men to join the expedition I was organizing, I might consider myself fortunate. More especially had I thought of Seedy Mbarak Mombay, commonly called "Bombay," who though his head was "woodeny," and his hands" clumsy," was considered to be the "faithfulest" of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... charity. If he enters the portals of the big church with poor clothes on, the usher approaches him with a severe face, and "Brother, I'm sorry, but only high-toned servants of the living God congregate in this church for worship, and with that seedy suit on they cannot admit you. All the seats in this magnificent edifice are owned and represented by 'solid' men, by men of capital. We pay our pastor $5,000 a year—the annual eight weeks vacation thrown in—and it would not be profitable ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... he is rather seedy, " said Jock. "Can't sleep, and has headaches! But 'tis a regular case of having ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from being still more profane only lest his wrath should awaken inconvenient suspicions. After all, there was one old tavern a little way out, where possibly a one-horse affair could be raised. The Birch House was a sort of seedy, dried-up, quiet, out-of-the-way inn, whose sign-post stood forth like a window without sash, the rectangular ligneous picture of a man driving cattle to Brighton having long ago been blown out of its lofty setting and split to pieces by the fall. What was the use of replacing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prizefighter. His head was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... with its profitless labours, And tired of the night with its lack of repose, I am sick of myself, my surroundings, and neighbours, Especially Aryan Brothers and crows; O land of illusory hope for the needy, O centre of soldiering, thirst, and shikar, When a broken-down exile begins to get seedy, What a beast ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... in life. They were rarely seen except in hall or chapel or at lecture, where their manners of feeding, praying and studying, were considered alike objectionable; no one knew whence they came, whither they went, nor what they did, for they never showed at cricket or the boats; they were a gloomy, seedy-looking conferie, who had as little to glory in in clothes and manners ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... turned leisurely to a stocky-looking young fellow in seedy clothes standing wistfully off to one side—"you go on and pass the word to 'em as they come ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... who had been listening, groaned as Mr. Farrar passed through the door. "Ugh! Call that a way of doing business? Why, if it had been me, I'd have bought the book off of that old chap for a couple o' pounds, I would. Ay, or a sov, so seedy he is, and wants money so bad. And I know who'd have given twelve pound for it, in the trade too. Call that carrying on business? He may well add up his investments every day, it he can afford to chuck such chances. Ah, but he'll retire soon." His fiery eyes brightened, and his face glowed with ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... are told of Macdonald's ally, Lord Strathcona. I have room for only two. A seedy-looking person named M'Donald once called at the high commissioner's office in London. When asked the nature of his business, he replied that he was in straitened circumstances, and that when Lord Strathcona, as young Donald Smith, had left Forres in Scotland for America, he ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... sallied forth with the same lofty contempt of conventionalities that had characterised his very long career. How different the elated and aspiring heir of Moses! No wonder he spurned with indignation the offer of his seedy parent's arm. No wonder he walked a few paces before him, and assumed that unconcerned and vacant air which should assure all passengers of his being quite alone in the public thoroughfare both in person and in thought. Aby had been intensely ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... after ascending Ludgate Hill, arrived at the great northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment afterwards, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... I see, and what's not wanted I neither see nor perceive! There! Mother Matryona has also been young. I had to know a thing or two to live with my old fool. I know seventy-and-seven dodges. But I see your old man's quite seedy, quite seedy! How's one to live with such as him? Why, if you pricked him with a hayfork it wouldn't fetch blood. See if you don't bury him before the spring. Then you'll need some one in the house. Well, what's wrong with my son? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... scrape; and, like David in the mountains, "every one that is discontented, and every one that is in debt, gather themselves to her." The strangest people, on the strangest errands, run over each other in that cosy little nest of hers. Fine ladies with over-full hearts, and seedy gentlemen with over-empty pockets, jostle each other at her door; and she has a smile, and a repartee, and good, cunning, practical wisdom for each and every one of them, and then dismisses them to bill and coo with Claude, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... newly-landed regiment was asked, if coming from where they resided, was, "Well, how are the girls?" "Oh, gloriously. Matty is there." "Ah, indeed! poor thing." "Has Fan sported a new habit?" "Is it the old gray with the hussar braiding? Confound it, that was seedy when I saw them in Corfu. And Mother Dal as fat and vulgar as ever?" "Dawson of ours was the last, and was called up for sentence when we were ordered away; of course, he bolted," etc. Such was the invariable style of question and answer concerning them; and although ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... X; Last night I was in bed, A dream did me perplex, Which came into my Edd. I dreamed I sor three Waits A playing of their tune, At Pimlico Palace gates, All underneath the moon. One puffed a hold French horn, And one a hold Banjo, And one chap seedy and torn A Hirish pipe did blow. They sadly piped and played, Dexcribing of their fates; And this was what they said, Those three pore ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... one evening with Rocjean, was accosted by a very seedy-looking man, with a very peculiar expression of face, wherein an awful struggle of humor to crowd down pinching poverty gleamed brightly. He offered for sale an odd volume of one of the early fathers of the Church. Its probable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... diminutive top boots; no loose brown breeches, buttoned low beneath the knee; no elongated waistcoat with capacious pockets; no dandy coat with remarkably short tail. He was a very ugly man of about fifty, named John Bottom, dressed somewhat like a seedy gentleman; but he understood his business well, and did it; and was sufficiently wise to know that he served his own pocket best, in the long run, by being true to his master, and by resisting the numerous tempting offers which were ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy swells—walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... 99. PERSIMMONS.—Persimmons are a seedy, plum-like fruit common to the southern and southwestern parts of the United States. This fruit is very astringent when unripe, but is sweet and delicious when ripe or touched by frost. Well-frosted persimmons should be selected for canning. Blanch them so that the skin may be removed ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... clo'es air sort of shabby-like, and when we git him in that shiny new caskit, they air agoin' to show up orful seedy. But I can't afford ter buy him a new suit ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... doubtful whether the present constitution of Poland can last. It already isolates Poland economically from the rest of Europe, and she cannot import goods even from Germany at such a rate. There is a vast, poor, seedy, underfed population. Food is comparatively cheap, and the peasant is evidently being quietly robbed, by giving him only a fifth of the money-value of his products, but even so a tiny loaf of bread costs twenty marks. There is butter. There is no sugar (at cafes there is liquid ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... while longer, Bud decided to telephone Morris's home. But at that moment a thin, seedy-looking man came into the lounge. His close-set eyes and loudly striped suit combined to give ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... short metre. By the way, I'll give you a little wrinkle worth knowin'. I've observed that you didn't bring the children to the country to be like weeds—just ter grow and run ter seed, ye know. It's 'stonishin' how soon weeds, whether they're people or pusley, get seedy. Well, now, call the children and come with ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear. unstrengthened &c 159 [Obs.], unsupported, unaided, unassisted; aidless^, defenseless &c 158; cantilevered (support) 215. on its last ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... gentle man of about sixty years of age (not unlike in manner and habit Professor Bush, my principal at the Cedar Valley Seminary) received his seedy visitor with a kindly smile. I liked him and trusted him at once. He was tall and very thin, with dark eyes and a long gray beard. His face was absolutely without suspicion or guile. It was impossible to conceive of his doing an unkind or hasty act, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... number,—weight probably on a par with the leaded brogans of the little wind-driven poetaster of old. Between these two extremes might be found about five feet ten of humanity, lank, sapless, and stooping. The seedy drapery of the figure hung in lean, reproachful wrinkles. The flabby trousers seemed to say: "Give! give!" The hollow waistcoat murmured: "Pad, oh! pad me with hot biscuits!" The loose coat swung and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... was always called, lived on, from hand to mouth, I dare say—for he lost his job as keeper of the district prison—yet never wholly out-at-heel, scrupulously neat in his person no matter how seedy the attire. On the completion of the new wings of the Capitol and the removal of the House to its more commodious quarters he was made custodian of the old Hall of Representatives, a post he held until ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... brainless idiot, not half as good-looking as I am. There is conceit for you! But you know I was always rather vain of my looks, and I do believe that the greatest terror poverty holds for me is the knowing that I must wear seedy hats and threadbare coats, and trousers a year behind. Maybe Grey will sometime send me a box ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... the toe of her boot on the deck floor. "It's a perfect shame. And that horrible old man, he's so seedy and common —just think of it—and spoiling ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... justice of this part of the affair. Having been sent to gaol, however, because he could not deposit L50, Grant was treated as the commonest malefactor in all respects but one—he was allowed to retain his own clothing. The unfortunate old man made a pathetic picture with his seedy clothes, tail coat, tall white hat, and worn gloves, which he punctiliously wore whenever called upon to face the authorities—and it happened rather frequently. He objected to being classed and herded with the thieves and murderers and others whose crimes were even ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... of this entourage stood the "bar-keeper," and in this individual do not picture to yourself some seedy personage of the waiter class, with bloodless cheeks and clammy skin, such as those monstrosities of an English hotel who give you a very degout for your dinner. On the contrary, behold an elegant of latest fashion—that is, the fashion of his country ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... travel. It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it than the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a great court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one above another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades, and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine successive generations ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "Inconstant" frigate, Captain Pring, from Quebec. It would appear the roystering middies, having sacrificed copiously to the rosy god, after rising from a masonic dinner in the Albion Hotel, in Palace street, had noticed the "General" by the pale moonlight, looking very seedy, and considering that a sea voyage would set him up, had carried him on board. The General was driven down in a caleche by Colvin of St. Louis street—a carter—through Palace Gate, standing erect; the sentry presenting ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... stand which he himself had made for her out of an old packing case in those early days before London had taken the life out of him. Then, suddenly, the light upstairs was extinguished, and a few minutes later a short, stout man in a seedy frock coat and decrepit silk hat came down the steps, and ordered the van ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... earnestly, "I'm going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you'd have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you're pretty seedy, and that's a fact. I ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... large cucumber in half, length ways, scoop out the seedy part, and lay it in vinegar that has been boiled with mustard-seed, a little garlic, and spices, for twenty-four hours, then fill the cucumber with highly-seasoned forcemeat, and stew it in a rich gravy, the cucumber must be tied to keep ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... you aren't well?" Jean asked. "I know it's a wretched business trying to go on working when one is seedy." ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... that he and his wife were running hack to New York, and that you were taking his rooms. Damn fine place, isn't it? There's a woman's touch all over here. But you're looking precious seedy.' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... entertain one thought at a time. His lips moved as if he were talking to himself. And again it was Lawford's faltering voice that broke the silence. 'You see,' he said, 'I have never... no fit, or anything of that kind before. I remember on Tuesday... oh yes, quite well. I did feel seedy, very. And we talked, didn't we?—Harvest Festival, Mrs Wine's flowers, the new offertory-bags, and all that. For God's sake, Vicar, it is not as bad as—as they ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... chiffonier stands against the back wall on the right. There are a few cheap chairs. The whole effect is a curious blend of shabbiness, Americanism, Jewishness, and music, all four being combined in the figure of MENDEL QUIXANO, who, in a black skull-cap, a seedy velvet jacket, and red carpet-slippers, is discovered standing at the open street-door. He is an elderly music master with a fine Jewish face, pathetically furrowed by misfortunes, ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... Once he thought a Roger Payne binding had found its way to the shop, an inadvertent bargain; but, alas! the encyclopaedia dashed his tremulous hopes; years before the date on the title-page that seedy but glorious craftsman had ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... piled off, he was in the ditch, With two switch lamps and a rusty switch,— A poor, old, seedy, half-starved bo On a hostile ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... until after we picked up the boxes on the China coast. He was a good fellow, when we left Manila, but he was confined to his cabin for a day and a night and has been ugly as sin ever since. He came out of the sickness looking a bit seedy but that ought not to cause him to turn into ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... a city clergyman," continued the old man, "who always preaches in a silk gown, though he is a Congregationalist. 'It saves my coat', said he to me once in explanation. 'I can wear a seedy coat in the pulpit and no one is the wiser.' 'But,' said I, 'how about the silk gown?' 'Oh!' said he, 'the ladies furnish ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... Morgan met me at Calais, and told me to wait at Dunkirk, as everyone was quitting Furnes. One of our poor nurses was killed, and the Joos' little house was much damaged. I stopped at Mrs. Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by myself. It is an empty, bare little place, with neither carpets nor curtains, but there is something home-like about it, the result, I think, of having an open fire ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... gone to the Ramsbottoms," said Jimmy. "Old Lady Ramsbottom was taken ill. She sent for Sybil yesterday, as people do when they're seedy, you know. Won't ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... stone's throw of a Government head-quarters. But as a general rule all along the Coast the death penalty for murder or adultery is commuted to a fine, or you can send a substitute to be killed for you, if you are rich. This is frequently done, because it is cheaper, if you have a seedy slave, to give him to be killed in your stead than to pay a fine which is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... "Been seedy lately? Have some quinine. Or if you can't sleep I can tell you a dodge. But you know you are looking a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... first look that they looked haggard and wan, as wan agin as I ever see 'em look, and fur, fur haggarder. They looked all broke up, and their clothes looked all rumpled up and seedy, some as if they had slept in 'em for some weeks. But I hain't one to desert old friends under any circumstances, so I advanced onto 'em, and sez, with a mean that ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... has appropriated this peculiar portion of commercial history, and, describing it, says gravely and graphically: 'A colony of solicitors, engineers and seedy accountants, settled in the purlieus of Threadneedle Street. Every town and parish in the Kingdom blazed out in zinc plates over the doorways. From the cellar to the roof, every fragment of a room held its committee. The darkest cupboard on the stairs contained a secretary, or a clerk. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... groaned Algy. "Say, 'pon my word, I'll hate to have any soldiers see me when I'm looking as seedy as I'll look at ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... playing softly on the old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I passed ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... streets of Brussels, at first in seedy clothes and at last in filth and horrible rags. A relative came to his assistance with two hundred francs; he bought himself clothes and made himself respectable, but, in a fortnight, found himself relapsing again, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... the spot," cried the goaded Methodist, suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar, and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?—thought, seedy coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You find ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... exception of one man who might be guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink and one unmistakable Frenchman, they are all cockney or American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and sombreros, they mostly wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard hemispherical hats, and dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after their leader, whose broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band, and voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English as possible. None of them are armed; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... he said. "But, Jack, what on earth are we going to do about clothes? These uniforms are getting seedy, though it is lucky that we had on our best when we were caught, owing to our having had the others torn to pieces the night of the wreck. But as for other things, we have got nothing but what we have on. We washed our flannel shirts and stockings as well as we could whenever we halted, ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... house in Connaught Square, when, after quitting her husband, Morgiana drove back thither, the door was opened by the page, who instantly thanked her to pay his wages; and in the drawing-room, on a yellow satin sofa, sat a seedy man (with a pot of porter beside him placed on an album for fear of staining the rosewood table), and the seedy man signified that he had taken possession of the furniture in execution for a judgment debt. Another seedy ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... semi-military air, wearing his hat somewhat jauntily on top of a bloated face and figure, met them as he emerged from a side street, and, paternally patting their heads, called them 'little dears;' and, from his seedy dress and unoccupied manner, it was not hard to perceive that he must still be unsuccessful in his search after the employment ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Mr. Perkupp has got an appointment for Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on Monday. Oh, how my mind is relieved! I went to Lupin's room to take the good news to him, but he was in bed, very seedy, so I resolved to keep it over ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... seedy his hat and his coat. That his pantaloons bagged and were ragged and frayed? Still the world by its modern, unanimous vote Says it danced to the tune that his chin-music played! At the touch of his hand, at the thrill of his thought, It leaped on the paths where the greater truths ran, And ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... of ripe fruit, to make one of dry—this when the peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushels for one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any lack of fruit—beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the static fence rows—the corner of a worm fence furnishing an ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... man's or woman's social status quicker or more unerringly than a servant. The attendant saw at once that the man did not belong to the class which paid social visits to tenants in the Astruria. He was rather seedy-looking, his collar was not immaculate, his boots were thick and clumsy, his ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... the little taverne at Beaumont, to start—as we fondly supposed—for Brussels, it was pitch dark in the square of the forlorn little town. With us the polite and pleasant fiction that we were guests of the German authorities had already worn seedy, not to say threadbare, but Lieutenant Mittendorfer persisted in keeping the little romance alive. For, as you remember, we had been requested—requested, mind you, and not ordered—to march to the station with the armed escort that would be in charge ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... may admire it. Have the courage to speak your mind when it is necessary that you should do so, and hold your tongue when it is better you should be silent. Have the courage to speak to a poor friend in a seedy coat, even in the street, and when a rich one is nigh. The effort is less than many people take it to be, and the act is worthy of a king. Have the courage to admit that you have been in the wrong, and you will remove ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about it, so I suppose ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... surroundings seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the office-boy—a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the remaining clerical staff of the establishment—were ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... relating to Jim's competency to hold a teacher's certificate. The time appointed was ten o'clock. At nine forty-five Cornelius Bonner and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five per cent. of the chairs therein. At nine fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard, weather-beaten and seedy as ever, and looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept since his sweetheart stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon Peterson and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by Wilbur Smythe, attorney-at-law, who carried under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... Hill, arrived at the great northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... was embodied in the Diana who was queen and goddess of the realm. Yes—I shall always be glad I was with Neave when he had his first look at the Diana. I see him now, blinking at her through his white lashes, and stroking his seedy wisp of a moustache to hide a twitch of the muscles. It was all very quiet, but it was the coup de foudre. I could see that by the way his hands trembled when he turned away and began to examine the other things. You remember Neave's hands—thin, sallow, dry, with long inquisitive fingers ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... "The seedy swell of Naples or Rome—he is irresistible to the Italian girl," she said, on one occasion. "You know him; his shirt open at the neck down almost to his chest—his trousers tight at the knee and enormously wide at the foot—a poncho-looking kind of cloak, with a greasy Astrachan collar—a tall French ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... against the side of a building, was a tall man in seedy clothes. A card on his breast bore the sad legend, "Help the Blind." The man's eyes were covered with large blue goggles, and in one hand he held his hat, and in the other a couple of dozen cheap ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... live to earn her dinners In Mountjoy with seedy sinners: Lord, this judgment quickly bring, And I'm ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at the Playwrights' Club, and had asked him to dinner on the spur of the moment. He was oddly the same curly-headed, red-faced ventriloquist, and oddly different, rather seedy as well as untidy, and at first a little inclined to make comparisons with my sleek successfulness. But that disposition presently evaporated, and his talk was good and fresh and provocative. And something that had long been straining ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... her children didn't miss her, and to the dreariness, somehow, to Laura's sense, of the whole situation that one could neither spend tears on the mother and wife, because she was not worth it, nor sentimentalise about the little boys, because they didn't inspire it. 'Well, you do look seedy—I'm bound to say that!' Lionel exclaimed; and he recommended strongly a glass of port, while Ferdy, not seizing this reference, suggested that daddy should take her by the waistband and teach her to 'strike out.' He represented himself in the act of drowning, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... clear, the moon bright as day, and Staple and I with our cigars staid on deck to scrape acquaintance with the pilot and the small, seedy Frenchman who officiated at the calliope. He was an original in his way—"the Professor"—his head like a bullet, garnished with hair of the most wiry blackness, cut close as the scissors could hold it, looking like the most uncompromising ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... a wad of cries that would float the Maine, and I was sore for fair. A fat fellow cut into the argument, and some one soaked him in the eye, and then, as they say in Texas, "there was three minutes rough house." In the general bustle a seedy looking man pinched the Fresh Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much for the bat cave, and to avoid such after-complications as patrol wagons and things, I blew the bunch and started up street. I guess the wind must have been against me, as ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.

... have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... half with weakness. "Sir," I said, —But with a mien of dignity The seedy stranger raised his head: "My friends, I'm ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... through twenty-three miles on the straight road" to Rochester and Chatham on a certain Sunday. Afterwards, when he had found a home and a protecting providence with his aunt, he met with his "first fall in life" on the Canterbury coach, being asked by the coachman to resign the box seat to a seedy gentleman, who proclaimed that "'Orses and dogs is some men's fancy. They're wittles and ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... on that day and my appearance the next morning. "Felix's mamma," he says, "had worked a very pretty cap for Felix, and Felix had it on the morning after his birthday, and Felix found that though the cap was very pretty, it made him look very seedy." ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... said Puddock, finding his patient nothing better, and not relishing the notion of presenting his man in that seedy condition upon the field: 'I've got a remedy, a very thimple one; it used to do wondereth for my poor Uncle Neagle, who loved rum shrub, though it gave him the headache always, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... slowly, his finger pressed to his chin in thought. His face was worn and haggard. His clothing had taken on a seedy cast not formerly common to him. Apparently things might have been better with him in a financial way. Perhaps he saw a way to mend matters. "Halves?" said he at length, suddenly looking ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... power that I do hope for the best. I am as tired as man can be. This is a great trial to a family, and I thank God it seems as if ours was going to bear it well. And O! if it only lets up, it will be but a pleasant memory. We are all seedy, bar Lloyd: Fanny, as per above; self nearly extinct; Belle, utterly overworked and bad toothache; Cook, down with a bad foot; Butler, prostrate with a bad ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not very healthy-looking person of about fifty years of age, ill-dressed in seedy black clothes and a flaming red tie, with a fat, pale face, a pugnacious mouth, and a bald head, on the top of which isolated hairs stood up stiffly. I knew him by sight, for once he had argued with me at a lecture I gave on sanitary matters, when I was told that ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... and at dawn next morning they left camp and set out northward through the hills. It was a slow journey, and toward the end of it Buck felt rather seedy. But this was only natural, he told himself, after lying around and doing nothing; and he even wished he had made the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... II.—Greengrocer's yard at side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... "Don't be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared, she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection, with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... new tenant had contrived to commend himself to Mr. Mordaunt-Wagboom is something of a mystery. Probably it was his name rather than his appearance, which was shiny, not to say seedy. He encountered the Estate when that incorporated gentleman was engaged in painting the front door, and, in a deprecating voice, inquired whether twenty-five dollars a month ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... to see his seedy friend of the previous evening come back to tell him it was all a joke, when the small guide Jim ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... about, wondering why this man should speak to them. He looked like a gentleman though a rather shabby one. Montmorency would have termed him "seedy." His coat had seen better days and his hat, lying on the bench beside him, was worn and discolored, and his thin white hair told that he, also, was old. This made the girls regard him kindly, for both of them ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... rough country clothes, brown knickerbockers and gaiters, and looked something like a stout and seedy gamekeeper fond of ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... buzzing about here, there, and everywhere, with rolls of paper in his hand, a pen behind his ear, and another in his mouth, and who is never absent an hour together from the 'Mother Bunch,' where he has a private room much frequented by active, middle-aged persons of a rather seedy cast, and where he takes all his meals at the landlord's table. The first-fruits of these mysterious operations at length appear in the form of a prospectus of a new mutual-assurance society, under the designation of 'The Charitable Chums' Benefit Club;' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... prescription I dutifully submitted, but even port was powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Prominent Citizens" devoted to the town of Riverbank. The man was not as young as he appeared to be. His garments were of a youthful cut and cloth, being of the sort generally known as "College Youth Style," but they were themselves no longer youthful. In fact, the man looked seedy. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... intelligent and pleasant; and his voice clear and cheerful. But now! There was a wild, restless roll about his eyes, a bright flush on his hollow cheeks, a dulness about his mouth, a hoarseness in his voice, which seemed to belong to another being. He was dissipated and seedy in appearance, and hung his head, as though ashamed to meet a fellow-being's look, and, instead of one, looked at least ten years older ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... rackets were produced. None of them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a good-class racket in London and content myself for the present with economising on one of these second-hand monuments of depression. So I asked the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... people looked at him, but none spoke to him, for he was known now, as each stranger who stays long in Naples is known, summed up, labelled, and either ignored or pestered. The touts and the ruffiani were aware that it was no use to pester the Frenchman, and even the decrepit and indescribably seedy old men who hover before the huge plate-glass windows of the photograph shops, or linger near the entrance to the cinematograph, never peeped at him out of the corners of their bloodshot eyes or whispered a word of the white slaves ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... queer," and he cheerfully assured her that she "had best stop in bed a day or two and all would be well," after which he told her that he was not going back to England with the party, and, with a further remark to the effect that she "was looking awfully seedy," discovered that he was late for his train, was again pleasantly sure that she would "be all right soon," and hurried off to the station, well pleased to think that he should see Edith in a few hours. It is not always possible, however, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to Europe sine die. If we live in a small way, there are at least new dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one, if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in, of course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... this was his one way of accounting for his want of success. He did not write books, to be sure. He only wrote poetical advertisements. But they were printed and paid for, and this gave him a sort of prestige among his less lucky friends. He was seedy; only moderately clean, and wholly unshaven, thus avoiding, by one happy invention, both soap and the barber. Fierce he was to look at, with his rugged beard and eyebrows, and fierce in his resentment of the world's indifference. A Christmas invitation ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... forehead on my hands, as I sat and stared down at the bear-skin rug at my feet and saw a vision of fifth-rate existence pass before me. A suburban villa or squalid London lodgings; the hurried early breakfast served by a slavey; the tram or bus to the city; the society of seedy clerks; the pipe instead of the cigar; the public billiard room instead of the club; the omnibus instead of the hansom; the fortnight up the Thames instead of the spring at Cairo. A day of uncongenial work—but at the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... some months afterwards, a seedy-looking individual called at Portland Place with a typewritten ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson

... simple enough. He had endued himself in somewhat seedy clothes, and had visited 37 Raven Street, Blackfriars, which he found to be merely a tenement house. It took some time to make inquiries there, with the necessary caution, because of the number of lodgers; and then the inquiries ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... hanging outside and carry them into the store. The old man's eyes glanced carelessly up and down the street and caught sight of a man who turned the corner and came hurrying towards him. This man was a very seedy-looking individual. An old faded overcoat hung about his thin figure, and a torn and dusty hat fell over his left eye. He seemed also to be much the worse for liquor and very wobbly on his feet. And yet he seemed anxious to hurry onward in spite of ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... one evening some years ago—when heads now grey were brown, when eyes now dim were bright—the Strand was in its usual state of turmoil. Carriage followed carriage. Seedy clerks hustled past portly merchants—not their own masters, bien entendu, but those of other seedy clerks. Carriages and foot-passengers were alike going westward. All were leaving behind them the day and the busy city—some ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... pockets to the usual "bandanna bundle"; they were more convenient for storing away his wardrobe, but contributed largely to his comical appearance. He was a walking comedy. People gazed at him inquiringly and smiled. No doubt, many of them wondered where he came from and where he was going. He was seedy enough, but no one saw the seed of a philosopher or statesman about him. There was no promise in that direction. He was an embryo "Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of France"; but his appearance was that of a shack, or modern tramp, to whom Sunday is like all other days, and whose ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... servant he opens his eyes, and stares about him all ways—looking for the gentleman, as it struck me, for I don't think anybody but a man as was stone-blind would mistake Fixem for one; and as for me, I was as seedy as a cheap cowcumber. Hows'ever, he turns round, and goes to the breakfast-parlour, which was a little snug sort of room at the end of the passage, and Fixem (as we always did in that profession), without waiting to be announced, walks in arter him, and before the servant could get out, "Please, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... on spots and creases; his gaudy neckties became soiled and frayed; his fancy Newmarket overcoat, the like of which was only to be seen in Blakeville when some travelling theatrical troupe came to town, looked seedy, unbrushed, and sadly wrinkled. He forgot to shave for days at ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... were of stone; there were no windows, but a narrow aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the feeble glimmer of daylight. There was an iron door, and a water-pipe, and platform on which I lay, and on which reposed several gentlemen of seedy raiment and unwholesome appearance. The place and the company, as dimly revealed by the uncertain morning light, inspired me with emotions of horror; and in my inexperience and ignorance, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... of Venice. There are the long, slender and rather delicately-cut features terminating in a long, narrow and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sombre cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently very poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of "The Ten;" his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... gun in the bush makes them run like hares. Yet an English officer actually proposed to recruit a force of these recreants for field-service in Ashanti. He probably confounded them with the Wasawahili, the 'Seedy-boys' of the east coast, a race which some day will prove useful when the Sepoy mutiny shall repeat itself, or if the difficulties in Egypt be prolonged. A few thousands of these sturdy fellows would put to flight an army of hen-hearted Hindus ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... a seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign, which had been unjustifiably allowed, by foreign Powers, to drain Egypt of her gold and life-blood—some 25,000 men since the beginning of the Servian prelude—not only caused "abundant sorrow" to the capital, but also frightened off the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... importance who stand and listen at the sides was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just handed a letter to the crier, before he caught ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... study him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the like—or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as they were before they were born—what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a pretty ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... one was seedy for a while, with chills on the stomach and sore feet; and a great wave of depression passed over the division. We would have made any effort to hold Tekrit after our toil and losses. But the Fords were needed for another front. So Johnny, after a time, was able to creep cautiously ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great battered house and seedy garden ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Brodrick is quite seedy. We are all afraid he won't be able to stick it out much longer although he is making the most heroic efforts. In the morning I attended the funeral of young Collet, killed yesterday so tragically. A long, slow march through heavy sand all along the beach to Kephalos; then up through some ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... simpler comes, with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee, Still—save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur of fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear everlasting garments. They had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... something on the man's mind. A youth of twenty-three oughtn't to look as he did—married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife and child. I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to him: 'You look seedy; what's the matter?' He flushed, and got nervous. I made up my mind it was money. If I had been here longer, I should have taken him aside and talked to him like a father. As it was, things slid along. I was up in town, and here and there. One evening as I came back from town I saw a nasty-looking ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... all Jeremiah's fault, and I really can't think what he was doing. He admits that he was seedy, and had had a bad night. Anyhow, it was like this: I followed him down to the pier very early before breakfast, and you remember where the man was fishing and caught nothing that day? Well, what does Jeremiah do but just walk plump ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... washed its face, and put on a clean shirt for a shocking length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... It was a long, two-story frame building, that had once been inhabited by genteel people. Why they ever built it in that shape, or why they daubed it with yellow paint, is more than I can tell. But it had gone out of fashion, and now it was, as the boys expressed it, "seedy." Old hats and old clothes filled many of the places once filled by glass. Into one room of this ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... determined features, lit up by eyes of uncommon, almost unnatural brilliancy, with his hair combed back and gathered in a sort of queue, and dressed in the fashion of half a century ago, to wit, an old blue coat, with high collar, well-brushed and patched but somewhat 'seedy' pantaloons, of like date and texture, hat somewhat more modern, but bearing unmistakable proof of long service and exposure to sun and rain; old round-toed shoes, the top-leathers of which had survived more soles than the wearer had outlived souls of his early friends and companions; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... strips, place the seedy side around a piece of cream dough. The hand made cream can be made into various varieties of candy ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... the good woman, or vanithee, had got the pot of water warmed, in which Jemmy was made to put his feet. She then stripped up her arms to the elbows, and, with soap and seedy meal, affectionately bathed his legs and feet: then, taking the praskeen, or coarse towel, she wiped them with a kindness which ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... o'clock, as Mr. Gibney was on his way to the Marigold Cafe for breakfast, he was mildly interested, while passing the Embarcadero warehouse, to note the presence of fully a dozen seedy-looking gentlemen of undoubted Hebraic antecedents, congregated in a circle just outside the warehouse door. There was an air of suppressed excitement about this group of Jews that aroused Mr. Gibney's curiosity; so he decided to cross over and investigate, being of the opinion that possibly ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... cold, although it had been very warm during the day. They had all been drilling hard, and were dog-tired. One of the men was evidently very seedy. He complained of a sick headache, and he was ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... the goal-post. I blew the whistle and rushed to Aspinall; his cheek was bleeding villainously and he was deadly pale. I helped him up, and he said with his usual smile—who could mistake it for a sneer?—"Thanks, old man. Yes, I do feel a bit seedy. That back of yours is an animal, though." He tried hard to keep his senses; I saw him battling against his faintness, but the pain and shock were too much for him; he fell down again ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... really never had anything worth carrying away. He was so generous that his purse was always open, and so full of unmixed pity that the beggars passed his name along and made cabalistic marks on his gateposts. Every seedy, needy, thirsty and ill-appreciated musician in Germany regarded him as lawful prey. They used to say to Mozart, "I can not beg and to dig I am ashamed—so grant me a small ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... said, "I am afraid the boy isn't very fit—Jack wires that he seems seedy, and that they have got a man over from York. Don't be anxious, it's probably nothing much—but I think I'll ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their depressed heads drearily from side ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... character. FANNY MORANT can't play LADY MACBETH as perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, and MOLLENHAUER ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... be struggling to keep barely even with the score of life. The Banner of course ran as a daily, but it was a miserable, half-starved little sheet, badly printed, and edited, as the printers used to say, with a pitchfork. It looked shiftless and dirty-faced long before Brownwell began to look seedy. Editor Brownwell was forever going on excursions—editorial excursions, land-buyers' excursions, corn trains, fruit trains, trade trains, political junkets, tours of inspection of new towns and new fields, and for consideration he was forever writing grandiloquent accounts of his adventures home ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... is that mate Halsey?" roared Barr as he saw the bos'n—a seedy-looking fellow from the London slums—taking charge of the transfer of the ivory from the launch to the deck ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... face was waxen white, and blue and puffy under the eyes; his clothes were soiled and shabby, streaked in front with the stains of hurriedly eaten luncheons, and fluffy behind with the wool and hair of hurriedly-extemporized couches. In obedience to that odd law, that, the more seedy and soiled a man's garments become, the less does he seem inclined to part with them, even during that portion of the twenty-four hours when they are deemed less essential, Plunkett's clothes had gradually taken on the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... injustice if he married her. Why should he marry her if he doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want it? There she is, perfectly content and happy with her baby. It's been a little seedy lately, but it's absolutely sound. A very fine baby indeed, and Essy knows it. There's nothing wrong with ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... small? For that's mending. There's one good thing in being ill, it sets one growing. My thick go-to-meeting trousers that I left at Minsterham are gone up to my ancles; I must ask Wilmet if Clem hasn't left a pair that have got too seedy ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... are they?" cried Josephine, ecstatically, and she began to dust the seedy, frameless canvases with a reverential air. "Where ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... side of the proscenium opening bore the words: "Deputy Turn." On the stage was a gnarled old man with ruddy cheeks and a muffler, a seedy top hat on his head, a coaching whip in his hand, the old horse bus-driver of London in his habit as he had lived. The old fellow stood there and just talked to the audience of a fine sporting class of men that petrol has driven from the ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... the stuff. There are other men in this group, too, who have been drinking. I want you all to realize that this sort of thing must stop in this camp. We don't want fights and killings, nor do we want men who wake up so seedy in the morning that they can't do a proper day's work. As I look about me I see at least eight men who have been drinking this evening. That shows me that some one has been bringing liquor into ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... Malone, Lockley, and Evans, had thus disposed of their discarded apparel, and Drury Bond and one or two other miners had also added to the treasures that caught the eye of the inquisitive Digger. It was a museum of sartorial curiosities—seedy and ripped broadcloth coats, vests, and pants, flannel mining-shirts of gay colors and of different degrees of wear and tear, linen shirts that looked like battle-flags that had been through the war, and old shoes and boots of all sorts, from ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... came on, and at the turning of the path, just where Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy, poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along, with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... put in Vermont. "I was in the weighting-room, and saw him scaled. He was all right then. He always was white and seedy-looking. I saw ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice









Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |