"Shamble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... he change front to his friends and acquaintances: his honorable name, he maintained, had been trailed in the mud; his boasted hospitality betrayed; his house turned into a common shamble. That his own son was the culprit made the pain and mortification the greater, but it did not lessen his responsibility to his blood. Had not Foscari, to save his honor, in the days of the great republic, condemned his own son Jacopo to exile and death? Had ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... would give in. The action had now lasted from a quarter to eight to half-past eight. Of course the time appeared very much longer. The Bienfaisant was about to pour in another of her broadsides which had already produced such fearful effects. The deck of the Frenchman was truly a shamble; not a spot appeared free from some dead or wounded occupant. Just then the crew, fearful of encountering another iron shower, fled from their guns. Down came the Fleur-de-lys of France. Shouts arose from the deck of the Bienfaisant, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... it was better for her that she sat at home. I don't know just what she might have done had she been in the hall to see her father, at the close of the meeting, shamble forward with the crowd, and sign his name to ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... shamble noisily over the shingle, huge booted heels crunching, toward one of the dories. To this he set his shoulder, shoving it steadily down the beach until ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the bounce has gone out of me, Mate," he said with sad lines in his face. "Any extra work here is out of the question. I can only shamble around-an excuse for ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... a little in the rear of the line of beaters; and the wisdom of this counsel was soon made clear to Groot Willem and Hendrik. A herd of elephants broke from the bushes, but a few yards ahead of them, and were allowed to shamble off over the plain unmolested. They were not wanted in ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... this machine, the body, by the soul's action, be strung up to start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that shamble. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... lifted the branches of the trees a little in the lower land she had left, was growing keener, and would blow sharply enough across the unsheltered table-land she was reaching. But still she loitered, letting her rough pony snatch tufts of fresh grass from the banks, and shamble leisurely along as he strayed from one side of the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... to shamefacedly shamble toward the door. Izon rose to his feet, tried to intercept them, stretched out his arms ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... so well acquainted with his wardrobe, sir; but I saw a lean fellow, with sunk eyes and shamble legs, sigh pitifully at his chamber door, and entreat his man to put his master ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... will often desist from further ill-treatment of his victims; and if the latter will but lie still and feign dead, the monster will give up mauling him, and shamble off from the ground, apparently satisfied with having taken ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... soft clink of metal on metal and the mutter of dead-toned voices as the guard changed. Four hulking shapes walked at last in a tired shamble from the structure housing the mentacom. Four others prepared to ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... on the Player is one of the very few of Diderot's pieces of which we can say that, besides containing vigorous thought, it has real finish in point of literary form. There is not the flat tone, the heavy stroke, the loose shamble, that give a certain stamp of commonness to so many of his most elaborate discussions. In the Paradox the thoughts seem to fall with rapidity and precision into their right places; they are direct; they are not overloaded with qualifications; their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... boding, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off, He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double, To shamble at him zigzag, squat ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... mind killing the adult seals, but there was something very pathetic about killing the calves. The poor, awkward little things did their very best to run away, and kept uttering their peculiar little "bahs" all the time, but their walk or shamble was very tiring, and required a great effort, and only too soon they sank down utterly exhausted, asking, in their poor, dumb way, that ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... eye he could see Fay detach himself from the patient group of watchers and shamble in his direction. "What's it to be now?" Claude said to himself, but he stood his ground. He stood his ground without turning, or recognizing Fay's approach. He leaned nonchalantly on his stick, looking wearily up the line for rescue, till he heard a nervous cough. The nervous cough was followed ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... away they could hear something clanking, dragging its slow way along. Spellbound they turned to the farthest corner—and looked down the long, long road that twined off in distance. A lone, luminous figure plodded slowly along it, his half human shamble ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... court were a few trees—a poisonous yew or twain, or a deadly cypress, and in these owls, ravens, vampires and the like, make their nests, and cry unceasingly for flesh, although the whole place is but one vast, putrid shamble. The pillars of the hall were made of thighbones, and those of the parlour of shinbones, while the floors were formed of layer upon layer of ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... at Freedom's heart, once bore witness to the noble Spottswood's effort to realize for the working-man a Utopia in the New World. Yonder is the house, on the same river, frowning now with the cannon which defend the slave-shamble, (for the Richmond railroad passes on its verge,) where Washington was reared to love justice and honor; and over to the right its porch commands a marble shaft on which is written, "Here lies Mary, the Mother of Washington." A little lower is the spot where John ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... malicious twinkle. His wig was off, and his bandaged scalp, as well as his face, was smeared black with powder; and it appeared that he could not even walk like other men, for he moved across the deck with a gait that was something between a trot and a shamble and indescribably ludicrous. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... acute pain, he always spent half an hour in practice. Afterwards he would sit for some time, allowing the water from the tap at the side of the bath to flow upon the aching muscles. Then he would dress and, as soon as breakfast was over, go for a run in the garden. At first it was but a shamble, but gradually the terrible stiffness would wear off, and he would return ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... shuffle and a shamble, rather clumsy and ludicrous, but it takes him over the ground at a surprising pace. Queer, also, is the fact that the bear combines great dexterity with his seeming clumsiness, as many a hunter has found to his cost. His tree-climbing accomplishments ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... concrete images must be the writer's constant aim. Instead of a general term like "walk," for example, he should select a specific, picture-making word such as hurry, dash, run, race, amble, stroll, stride, shuffle, shamble, limp, strut, stalk. For the word "horse" he may substitute a definite term like sorrel, bay, percheron, nag, charger, steed, broncho, or pony. In narrative and descriptive writing particularly, it is necessary ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... brass plates and, gathering up his rags and polish, shuffled to the door. His walk was a patient shamble, but he covered incredible distances. When he reached the emergency bed he stopped and pointed to it. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... falls the bullock upon shamble-sill, Thus fell the ill-starred stripling, in despite Of king Cymosco, worst among the ill; So was the impious king of Friesland hight Who did my brothers and my father kill, And, in my state to found a better right; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... took little to please me in those days. But I have always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. I cannot abide to see a man shamble or slouch, or throw his arms and legs about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,—great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... about her which repelled, and those who were wont to pass her on the street with a friendly flourish of the hand and a "Hello, Doc," somehow omitted it and substituted a nod and a stare of curiosity. Her swaggering stride of assurance was a shamble, and, as she came down the street now with her head down, her Stetson pulled low over her eyes, her hand thrust deep in one pocket of her square cut coat, her skirt flapping petticoatless about her, she looked even to the wife of the baker, who liked her, and to the clairvoyant milliner, ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... inflamed and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived at the church-door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and not a syllable of Mr. Shamble's sermon, did either of them comprehend, probably—so much was each engaged with his own private speculations. The major came up to them after the service, with his well-brushed hat and wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful air. He complimented them upon being seen at ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, shorten sail, take in sail; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... elated to find how well his breath was serving him. An odd smile darkened his face at remembrance of the thoughts he had been thinking. There could be little amiss with the heart of a man who could shamble along like this, taking even pleasure, an increasing pleasure in this long, wolf-like stride. He turned round occasionally to look into the face of some fellow-wayfarer whom he had overtaken, for he felt not only this ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Within the shop an old journeyman was always to be seen, busy at his trade, and taking no heed of any customer coming in, unless the ringing of a bell on the lower half of the door remained unnoticed, when he would shamble away to call his mistress. In an evening after the twilight had set in, and it was too dark for her own ornamental stitching of the saddlery. Ann Holland was often to be found leaning over the half-door of her shop, and ready to exchange a friendly good-night, or a more ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... served. sark, shirt. sassenach, Saxon, Southron. saugh, willow. saut, salt. sax, six. scartit, scratched. scunnert, disgusted to the verge of nausea. shakers, pit the shakers on me, set me trembling with fear. shauchle, shamble, walk in a shuffling manner. shoon, shoes. shouther, shoulder. sib, related, like. sic, such. siccar, sure. sicht, sight. sichtit, sighted. siller, money. sin, since. sinon, sinew; wi' a gey teuch sinon in your neck, possessed ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... the landing-stage, the man clambered upon it, threw a couple of half-hitches in the painter round one of the stakes, shouldered the oars and began to shamble toward the hotel: a tall, ungainly figure blackly silhouetted against the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;—all, all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,—her second self. It sprang towards her; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be Ikki the Porcupine, full of news of good feed just a little farther on; at another Mang would cry cheerily and flap down a glade to show it was all empty; or Baloo, his mouth full of roots, would shamble alongside a wavering line and half frighten, half romp it clumsily back to the proper road. Very many creatures broke back or ran away or lost interest, but very many were left to go forward. At the end of another ten days or so the situation was this. The deer and ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of the morning. Paul was too young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him; but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had to look back upon—cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one distinct and dreadful idea of gain—to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 'button,' now had several dozen of them worked up into brooches, which he scattered about with a liberal hand. It was not one of your matter-of-fact story-telling buttons—a fox with 'TALLY-HO,' or a fox's head grinning in grim death—making a red coat look like a miniature butcher's shamble, but it was one of your queer-twisting lettered concerns, that may pass either for a military button or a naval button, or a club button, or even for a livery button. The letters, two W's, were so skilfully ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... down this household highway: of the masterful tread of spur-shod boots, the dancing of the belle's slim-slippered feet, the pompous double steps of bumpy baby shoes, the gouty stump of old grandsire, and the faithful shamble of the black ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... They shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... sharply round to point with uplifted trunk down the road in the direction from which it had come, it went off in its curious shuffling shamble as if in pursuit of the flying crowd; while, now in a state of the greatest excitement, about a score of the wild-beast van-drivers, headed by the man who had the elephant in charge, cracking his whip and shouting for it to come ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... have the best taste and echo his responses an octave higher. If he sighs at the end of a song, I bring out my pocket-handkerchief. If he says "charming," I murmur "delicious." If he thinks it "exquisite," I pronounce it "enchanting." Where he is rapt in admiration, I go into a trance, and so shamble through the performances, miserable impostor that I am, and ten to one nobody finds out that I am a dunce, fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. It is a great strain upon the mental powers, but it ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... word for pantry (Chapter XX), and Mews, originally applied to the hawk-coops (see Mewer, Chapter XV), point to domestic employment. The simple Mew, common in Hampshire, is a bird nickname. Scammell preserves an older form of shamble(s), originally the benches on which meat was exposed for sale. The name Currie, or Curry, is too common to be referred entirely to the Scot. Corrie, a mountain glen, or to Curry in Somerset, and I conjecture that it sometimes represents Old French and Mid. Eng. curie, a kitchen, which is the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... .. < chapter lxvii 23 CUTTING IN > It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; .. every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods. In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the man himself as I first saw him. He was at that time in his thirty-third year, my junior by a year. If Eugene Field had ever stood up to his full height he would have measured slightly over six feet. But he never did and was content to shamble through life, appearing two inches shorter than he really was. Shamble is perhaps hardly the word to use. But neither glide nor shuffle fits his gait any more accurately. It was simply a walk with the least possible waste of energy. It fitted Dr. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... lighted on Eliphalet. His blood was sluggish, but it could be made to beat faster. The ladies he had met at Miss Crane's were not of this description. As he came forward, embarrassment made him shamble, and for the first time in his life he was angrily conscious of a poor figure. Her first question dashed out the spark of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... expense. They also searched for, and discovered, a great number of those who ought to have served in the cavalry; and all those who were seventeen years old at the beginning of the war and had not served, they disfranchised. They then contracted for the restoration of the seven shops, the shamble and the royal palace, situated round the forum, and which had been consumed ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... deed—'and here is the tongue of Lagrange,—the tongue that would have proclaimed your shame and effected your ruin, had its owner lived; but he now lies a cold corpse, and this once mischievous member is now as powerless as a piece of carrion beneath a butcher's shamble.' ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the sagacious citizen; "this fellow is not ill named—he has more plies than one in his cloak. Stay, fellow," for Moniplies, muttering somewhat about finishing his breakfast, was beginning to shamble towards the door, "answer me this farther question—When you gave your master's petition to his Majesty, gave you nothing ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... bullock spitted upon a large elm. The fire it was roasted by was composed of a middling mountain of wood, and round it were placed six pots, not cast in common moulds; for they were half-jars, each containing a whole shamble of flesh; and entire sheep were sunk and swallowed up in them, as commodiously as if they were only so many pigeons. The hares ready cased, and the fowls ready plucked, that hung about upon the branches, in order to be buried in the caldrons, were without number. ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
