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noun
Scrawl  n.  Unskillful or inelegant writing; that which is unskillfully or inelegantly written. "The left hand will make such a scrawl, that it will not be legible." "You bid me write no more than a scrawl to you."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books



... But he managed to scrawl the word "Barsanti;" then he wrapped the paper round a small pebble and approached the fountain. By putting one foot on the edge of the stone basin beneath he could reach over to the curved top, and ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... mine was a wretched scrawl by the side of yours. I do not know how, with those terrible telegrams beginning to fly round you, you find time to write such letters. I could never have taken the Foreign Office without the heaviest misgiving, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... swinging, singing, playing on some musical instrument, &c. I have often been on these parties, and never spent my time more to my satisfaction; which is more than you will be able to say of that spent in reading this scrawl from ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... will attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the hands of your ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... the family arms. Everybody has got to having arms now-a-days. (She points to the indescribable scrawl over the mantelpiece.) It was got through Herald King, of London, who they say keeps her Majesty's slippers and the great seal of State. We were very exact, you see. Yes, sir-we were very exact. Our vulgar people, you see-I ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of the old guilds and corporations. Those belong to ancient societies which have gradually joined the movement. Over all waves the standard of the millers, which is some hundreds of years old! It displays a curious-looking scrawl which is the monogram ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... promise we made of a regular correspondence with each other. Excuse all faults in this wretched scrawl. Give my love to the Miss Taylors when you see them. Farewell, my dear, dear, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... to talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't see without ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Betty interrupted disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. The ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... have some tea and work it out together." And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination of the penciled scrawl which went for ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... middle of their official scrawl, they made me write in French my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of Kiu-Siu, to inhabit a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... inventor of "larnin'." The result was that Joss learned to read and write before the voyage was over. It is true there were few people outside the forecastle that could tell what it was all about, unless they studied very closely his eccentric pronunciation and the wild scrawl of his writing. He never went far enough to get even a second mate's certificate. He thought it an unnecessary waste of time, seeing that he intended to leave the sea as soon as he could attain a pilot's branch. This he succeeded in doing, and had a ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... burned the record of the examinations," said the lady of fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed conduct that she did not yet feel the pain of the burns, "If that is a crime—well, monsieur must get his odious scrawl written out again." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... truly dreadful scrawl, but never mind, quantity wins the day, quality nowhere. You see I am taking the subjects of your letter and answering them as I go along. So far from having had to dip into my money for Henry, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... also a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... have been scored so deep into your nature will be erased, and His own hand will trace on the page, poor and thin though it be, which has been whitened by His blood, the fair letters and shapes of His own likeness. Do not let your hearts be the devil's copybooks for all evil things to scrawl their names there, as boys do on the walls, but spread them before Him, and ask Him to make them clean and write upon them His new name, indicating that you now belong to another, as a new owner writes his name on a book that he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... free and rapid hand, with a generous flourish; he felt sure it would be different from Alec Stone's idea of a working-boy's scrawl. His pencil flew on and on—"Joe Smith—Joe Smith—" page after page, until he was sure that he had written a signature for every miner in the camp, and was beginning on the buddies. Then, hearing a whistle outside, he stopped and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... King John, who ascended the throne after putting out his nephew's eyes with a pair of curling-irons, and who is the first English Sovereign who attempted to write his own name; for the scrawl is evidently something more than his mark, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... her door by Mrs Farthing, recalled her to the trivialities of everyday life. She picked them up, to see that one was in the well-known writing of the man she loved; the other, a strange, unfamiliar scrawl, which bore the Melkbridge postmark. Eager to open her lover's letter, yet resolved to delay its perusal, so that she could look forward to the delight of reading it (Mavis was already something of an epicure in emotion), ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... old-style school—and draw lots for one of us to stay home and sign in for all twelve. You see, he'd sit there reading, and when one of us came in, just shove the wax at us, with his nose in a text on cosmic dust, never looking up. So the one who stayed home would scrawl a name on it, walk out the back door, come around and sign in again. When there were twelve signed in, of course, the old chap would go up to bed, and late that night the one who stayed in would sneak down ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... stared Williams came rushing wildly in. All gave way to him, and the young doctor who followed him was greeted with low words of satisfaction. To his partner, whom he recognized, Haney repeated his command: "Send for Bertie." With a hurried scrawl Williams put down the girl's name and address on a piece of paper, and shouted: "Here! Somebody take this and rush it. Tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her." Then, with the tenderness of a brother, he bent to Haney. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... go back to Miss Pinwell's?" Mrs. Fenton demanded sharply. "I see by this scrawl that it isn't the first time you've stolen out to meet this precious gallant ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... Stranger of the stage; A Some One made in every man's presumption, Frankenstein's monster—but instinct with gumption; Another strange state captive in the north, Constable-guarded in an iron mask— Still let me ask, Hast thou no silver platter, No door-plate, or no card—or some such matter, To scrawl a name upon, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the backbone of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... 140 pages of the score of my "Elizabeth" are written out complete (in my own little cramped scrawl). But the final chorus—about 40 pages—and the piano-arrangement have still to be done. By the middle of August I shall ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... reverently removed a pile of books and papers from a chair, dusted it, and placed it near an open window, and I amused myself by looking out upon the busy scene in the harbour, while the admiral proceeded to scrawl his signature upon ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... had exchanged his bit of broken china for a very much used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also among the witnesses; ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... receiver; and, hastily now, began to write upon a pad that lay before him on the desk. The minutes passed. As he wrote, he scored out words and lines here and there, substituting others. At the end he had covered three large pages with, to any one but himself, an indecipherable scrawl. These he shoved aside now, and, very carefully, very legibly, made a copy on fresh sheets. As he finished, he heard a car draw up in front of the house. Jimmie Dale folded the copied sheets neatly, tucked them in his pocket, lighted ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Kathlyn calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had anticipated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father's characteristic blunt scrawl. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the new female college building committee, that his plans were too elaborate and costly, and must therefore be declined, really demanded no reply, and would probably never have one. It was the hurried scrawl from his friend Wilberforce which claimed of his sense of honor an answer by the next mail. The letter from Wilberforce was dated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the most frightful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Scandal that is not legible; and have a whole Bundle of Letters in Womens Hands that are full of Blots and Calumnies, insomuch that when I see the Name Caelia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at the Bottom of a Scrawl, I conclude on course that it brings me some Account of a fallen Virgin, a faithless Wife, or an amorous Widow. I must therefore inform these my Correspondents, that it is not my Design to be a Publisher of Intreagues and Cuckoldoms, or to bring ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various

... nearly the last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in pencil ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... later I received another letter from Bastin which, as a scrawl on the flap of the envelope informed me, he had carried for a week in his pocket and forgotten to post. Except by inference it returned no thanks for my intended benefits. What it did say, however, was that he thought it wrong of me to have settled a matter of such spiritual importance ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... absence, she started out upon her quest. She had reached the first gate, passed it and was on the point of opening the second one, when she saw on the walk before her a small slip of brown paper. Lifting it, she perceived upon it an almost illegible scrawl which she made out ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... swords against the wall, while the assassins overturned the table and did their work. Wallenstein, as usual, was not at the banquet. He was, indeed, in no condition for revelry. Gout had shattered his stately form, reduced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probably shaken his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen, for a decisive hour; and, perhaps, if his enemies could have waited, the course of nature might have spared them the very high price which they paid for his blood. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... corrections in a neat, pretty little hand, which of itself seemed to reprove the student's awkward scrawl. He turned then to his own studies, which he was pursuing in a tattered volume of Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Common Law. He did not get on very fast with this book, and sometimes he wondered what bearing it could have on the practice of the law in Ohio at the present ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... I've begun to scrawl, but whether In rhyme, or prose, or baith thegither; Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle—like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... scrawl improves! [more] O come, 'tis pretty plain. Hey! how's this? Dibble!—sure it cannot be! A poet's brief! a poet ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... watched him feebly scrawl a "T" and what might have been an "o"—and a haggling "m"; and then the pencil dropped. He looked so strange, he scarcely breathed; and frightened, Charley darted into the other room where his ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out, "tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of her father—therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile of amusement—and relief—on ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... lecture me till I cry—though indeed I have been crying half through the night. And then if you want to be VERY horrid you may tease me for being so slow to see a joke. And then you might take me to see some of the Colleges and things before we go on to lunch at The MacQuern's? Forgive pencil and scrawl. Am sitting up in bed ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... your sex. It is his due and yours. No form of affection is to be withheld from him. It is to be done frankly and impressively, and when the time comes—" I can hardly write this, but the memory of the wonderful though fanatic light in Jane's eyes makes me able to scrawl it—"that you feel the mating instinct in you move towards any man, I charge you that you are to consider it a sacred obligation to express it with the same honesty that a man would express the same thing to you, in ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it, but ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... 'Gentlemen,' said Mr Melmotte, in his usual hurried way, 'is it your pleasure that I shall sign the record?' Paul Montague rose to say that it was not his pleasure that the record should be signed. But Melmotte had made his scrawl, and was deep in conversation with Mr Cohenlupe before Paul could get upon ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... somewhat advanced, it was certain that the Duke would conquer all impediments, and be the instrument by which his royal master might render to God that service which he was so anxious to perform. Enthusiastic, though gouty, Philip grasped the pen in order to scrawl a few words with his own royal hand. "This business is of such importance," he said, "and it is so necessary that it should not be delayed, that I cannot refrain from urging it upon you as much as I ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the "Four Alls": its sign, a crude painting of a table and four seated figures, a king, a parson, a soldier, and a farmer. Beneath the group, in a rough scrawl, were ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... your old mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the Church or State; Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... Majors' book, "Seventy Years on the Frontier," he relates how on every wagon-sheet and wagon-bed, on every tree and barn door, he used to find the name "William F. Cody" in a large, uncertain scrawl. Those were my writing lessons, and I took them daily until I had my signature plastered pretty well over the whole of Salt ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... love letter—my first love letter—and she made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: "I can't write letters. Wait till we can talk. Are ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem, And yet can not regret what it hath cost, So dear is still the memory of that dream; Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast, None can deem harshlier of me than I deem: I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest— I 've nothing ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... once to his house; sent me a card, half of it printed like a book! t'other half a scrawl could not read; pretended to give a supper; all a mere bam; went without my dinner, and got nothing to eat; all glass and shew: victuals painted all manner of colours; lighted up like a pastry-cook on twelfth-day; wanted something solid, and got a great lump of sweetmeat; found it as cold as a stone, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, never, oh!' And then they tell about a splendid ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... parchment scroll, And in letters of gold, the crime it told, That blasted a sister's soul. That fluttering dove flew round the shrine, Where the Pope by chance was led, And he let the scribbled parchment fall On his holiness' bald head. Now the Pope was very sore perplex'd, At the words the dove had scrawl'd, For he could not read the pig-squeak tongue, Which is now old English call'd. He questioned the French ambassador, The news of that scroll to speak. Who bowing observed, "it was not French, He never had learn'd the Greek." He ask'd a monk from Byzantium, A monk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... long, incoherent scrawl. How did you like Erewhon? It's pretty near closing time and I must say grace ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... our desolateness, just as we had let the daylight in again upon our diminished numbers round the table, came a letter from Hong-Kong, addressed to me in Lawrence Frith's writing, and the first thing I saw was a scrawl, as follows:- ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... multitude of the dead there is no room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that first evening ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... to the South in the spring and summer. Cold is the speciality of the North, and all its sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... scrawl, their eyes leaping along the lines, striving to grasp the meaning ere it ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... passed unreservedly into her own hands, was a wearisome necessity that had been got through as expeditiously as possible, with as little attention to detail as the old family lawyer had allowed, and an absence of interest that was evidenced in the careless scrawl she attached to each document that was given her to sign. The mere money in itself was nothing; it was only a means to an end. She had never even realised how much was expended on the continuous and luxurious expeditions ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to the flame; Both your attempts ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... it who cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballot who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to spell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much the State for its own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a right belonging to universal humanity regardless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... over the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... day to day," continued Mrs. Magnus, sitting down again. "Every morning the little heap of ashes and fragment of cigar, and a scrawl like that—until finally, one morning, I understood what was happening in this room, for ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It is astonishing what a few ounces of food ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... answer, placed in his hand a paper, and seemed anxiously to expect the consequences which were to ensue. Mr. Herries looked it over with the same equanimity as before, and then continued, 'And were such a scrawl as this presented to me in my own house, I would throw it into the chimney, and Mr. Faggot upon the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... it in a martial hand; be curst and brief] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed—a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... take something from under his head and I helped him. I found a scrawl saying, 'Look ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... and wrote a note to the watchman, telling him that the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the property and that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with his hard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from his seat, and said: "That'll fix ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... They found him dead on the field. He fell in the front ranks with my photograph in his pocket next to his heart, this pardon wrapped around it, and on the back of it in his boy's scrawl, 'God bless Abraham Lincoln.' I love to invest ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... writing of mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... very rude, and almost obliterated, for seventeen hundred years had passed over it. It was a husband's lamentation over a dead wife: "O Sophronia! dear Sophronia! thou mayest live?—Thou shalt live!" How eloquently did that rough, faded scrawl, over a long-forgotten grave, speak of the human fear that perhaps his wife was lost to him for ever—"Thou mayest live?" and of the noble faith that triumphed over it—"Thou shalt live!" Nothing affects and astonishes one more in these inscriptions than this ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... sustained[1]; and I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself further with it for your sake, or for my own. I shall endeavour to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the levity of my yesterday's scrawl—I little thought under what circumstances it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Dear Son,—I hope Sander will be with you on Wednesday morn, with the horses, books, bags, and this. I got your mother to write the inclosed (for you see I can hardly scrawl), because it was possible it might come to hand on Tuesday; but my head was so full of cares that I forgot on Saturday last to put it into the post-house. I shall be very glad to see you, though but for a day, but much more for a quarter of a year. I think you will make what ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... took up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... or something like that," answered Pierre. "There were letters also. Two of them were full of harsh words, and these were signed with the scrawl." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its meaning ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... out to open, but Philip was already on his feet, and with quick, clumsy steps he reached the writing-table, seized the pen Perez had thrown down, and began to scrawl words rapidly in his great angular handwriting. He threw sand upon it to dry the ink, and then poured the grains back into the silver sandbox, glanced at the paper and held it out to Dolores without a word. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... me the happy instrument of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... who employed flint implements and arrow-heads for records, and neglected to clear away the remains of prehistoric meals in caverns. Others preferred to write their chronicles upon pots, urns and tombs or to scrawl placid monosyllables upon polygonal walls. But with all their industry the muses have never been able to keep pace with the material that has accumulated round the dwellings of men and women. They have done their ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her father, whom they did not like. The boys had the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was left practically uneducated. All her life she wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner called Panaurov, had fallen in love with ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... At the beginning of Henslowe's Diary we find the scrawl "Chomley when" (Greg, Henslowe's Diary I, 217); this was written not earlier than 1592, and it shows that Cholmley was at that time ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the deed, for I most sincerely wish success to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... offer, and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... at receiving this joyful news, that it was with considerable difficulty I could scrawl about two or three lines to inform Lieutenant Maughn of the arrangements I had made. We were all so deeply affected by the gratifying tidings, that we seldom closed our eyes, but continued watching day and night for the boat. On the 6th she returned with Lieutenant ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... resumed Bluewater, carefully tearing the signature from the bottom of the page, and burning it in a candle; "let this disgraceful part of the secret die, at least. The fellow who wrote this, has put 'confidential' at the top of his miserable scrawl: and a most confident scoundrel he is, for his pains. However, no man has a right to thrust himself, in this rude manner, between me and my oldest friend; and least of all will I consent to keep this ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... You must, therefore, receive it with all its imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... the little journalist's scrawl. His whole face grew crimson, his eye shone as with madness. "Hulda! Hulda!" he cried, "the Idea works! God be thanked! English! Through the world! Hulda! Hulda!" He was bending ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote me a most impertinent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... bags. I was a young man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, by three ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... has brought a letter from Catherine. I find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up, look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing, partly in my landlady's spider scrawl—for it had gone first to my London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember me to my brother, my nieces, and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... example, is hardly a physical idea at all. Every motion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,—a fog or an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight line. Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that makes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from other things. The word with him has a human, not a physical connotation. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... at once benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... "Excuse my scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this. I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep as I would ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... And florid vaunts of quacks who advertise. Not these sky-horrors, huge and noisy-hinged, Shamed the still air about it, or obscured Its every view. Is it to be endured, O much-enduring Briton? There be those Who'd scrawl advertisements of Hogs or Hose Across the sun-disc as it flames at noon, Or daub the praise of Pickles o'er the moon. Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste, They 'd smear the general sky with poster's paste And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various

... was no better than very vulgar: reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... followed were in no way remarkable; but Dolores was deeply affected by scenes which no longer moved her companions. Every evening a man entered, called several persons by name and handed them a folded paper, a badly written and often illegible scrawl in which not even the spelling of the names was correct, and which, consequently, not unfrequently failed to reach the one for whom it was intended. This was an act of accusation. The person who received it was allowed no time to prepare ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... great field of performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama. I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford, and whatever else you can about our fools and knaves, for though ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... fountain-pen is really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my pencil scrawl. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... few days ago there came to the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But readable it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was cramped ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... fricated on silke clothe. Ye flame putteth me in mind of sheet lightning on a small—how very small—scale. But I shall in my epistles abjure Philosophy whereof when I come down to Sakly I'll give you enou'. I began to scrawl at 5 mins. from 9 of ye clk. and have in writing consmd. 10 mins. My Ld. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... was somewhat pre-occupied—as much, that is to say, as he was in the habit of allowing. The pencil scrawl supplied food enough for conjectural thought. The writing was undoubtedly fresh, and this was the 26th of the month. Some appointment was made for midnight by the words pencilled on the boat, and the journalist ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... an aimless scrawl across the paper; for an instant he stared at his companion with blank eyes. Fortunately June Mason was too intent on the relighting of her cigarette to have any attention to spare for him; she went on talking as ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... got back to his room, spent and disheveled at nine o'clock, he found two letters under his door. One, a black-bordered envelope addressed in Connie's familiar scrawl, he thrust into his pocket, smiling in spite of himself at the memory of Miss Lady's bargain stationery. The other, a long, bulky envelope, bearing the device of a well-known magazine, caused him to sit limply down on his steamer- trunk and gaze ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... day, and the sooner he got through his work the better. I set it down in my mind that he had never had a son amissing on the field of battle, or he never would have written an anxious and sorrowing father such a cold scrawl. He did not even say that, if they got any tidings concerning my son, they would make me acquainted with them. He was only commanded to tell me that they did not know what I was, beyond every thing on earth, desirous ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... wife, and Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye thus know ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... are heavenly restful and comforting. You—" he checked himself and got up. "Then I'm to write, and you are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... accusing the common enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... Folding up the hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing more to ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... her sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy even ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... small boy delivered a note at the door and scuttled back to the centre of excitement. It was a scrawl from Keith, saying that he was detained, would not be home to dinner, might not be in at all. Nan sat down to a cold, belated meal served by a loftily disapproving Chinaman. She tried to think of her pride in Keith, and the work he, in company ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White



Words linked to "Scrawl" :   handwriting, write, scribble, chicken scratch, script



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