"Ungainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passage towards the row of Professors. He was a young man of spare figure and unhealthy complexion, his age not easily conjectured. Embarrassment no doubt accounted for much of the awkwardness of his demeanour; but, under any circumstances, he must have appeared ungainly, for his long arms and legs had outgrown their garments, which were no fashionable specimens of tailoring. The nervous gravity of his countenance had a peculiar sternness; one might have imagined that he was fortifying his self-control with scorn of the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... apathy into Desmond's sympathetic ears. Being both plump and energetic, she suffered cruelly in the heat; mopped her face without shame between her sentences; and, according to Frank Olliver, lived chiefly on lime-squash, and a limitless admiration for her missionary husband,—a large, ungainly man, with the manners of a shy schoolboy, and the wrapt gaze of a seer; a man who, in an age of fanaticism, would have walked smiling to the rack. As it was, he walked with no less equanimity through the pestilential mazes of the city and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... knees and shoulders. Follow a couple of hours of simple patience, with nothing to entertain one's thoughts but the steady roar of the line under the wheels, the blinking and dripping of the oil lantern, and the more or less ungainly wretchedness, and variously sullen compromises and encroachments of posture, among the five other passengers preparing themselves for sleep: the last arrangement for the night being to shut up both windows, in order to effect, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... lines," Jeff pursued, after parting with his mother. "Jackson's done it, and he can't imagine anything else. I don't say it isn't well done in its way, but the way's wrong; it's stupid and clumsy." When they were got so far from the hotel as to command a prospect of its ungainly mass sprawled upon the plateau, his smouldering disgust burst out: "Look at it! Did you ever see anything like it? I wish the damned thing would burn ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him. In most cases this lower jaw —being easily unhinged by a practised artist —is disengaged and hoisted on deck for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... have derived some pleasure from displaying a figure so beautiful, with no adornment except its native gracefulness; but how great must have been the chagrin of the Princesses, of many of the Court ladies, indeed, of all in any way ungainly or deformed, when called to exhibit themselves by the side of a bewitching person like hers, unaided by the whalebone and horse-hair paddings with which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a level with the worst? The prudes who practised illicitly, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... certainly nothing can be more sickening than to see one so highly endowed, and who might command the applause of listening senates, gradually sinking below the level of manhood by habitual indulgences. In personal appearance, he was rather awkward, of an ungainly figure, his countenance not highly intelligent, but cheerful and rather pleasing. After the ostracism of the great bulwark of Democracy, Douglas, from the councils of his party, Senator Green became the leader of that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... most ungainly countenance, yet did well enough: he was very thankful for a blister on his loins to ease rheumatic pains, and presented a huge basket of porridge before starting, with a fowl, and asked me to fire ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... raw, ungainly, but powerful looking youth from Kintail was seen staring about, as the Mackenzies were starting to meet the enemy, in an apparently idiotic manner, as if looking for something. He ultimately came across ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... every decaying log or stump. One species with very long legs, Scutigera forceps (Raf.), is often found in damp houses or in cellars. It is sometimes called the "wall-sweeper," on account of its rapid ungainly gait, and is even reputed to prey upon cockroaches and other ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... known to their species. He had no schooling to speak of; but, for all that, was haunted, like Joseph, by dreams foreshadowing his future greatness. Guided by this premonition he started, at the age of fourteen, for Copenhagen, a tall, ugly, and ungainly lad, but resolved, somehow or other, to conquer fame and honor. He tried himself as a dancer, singer, actor, and failed lamentably in all his debuts. He could not himself estimate the extent of his own ignorance, nor could he dream what a figure he was cutting. Undismayed by all rebuffs, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and the Windom. You will remember that the Nashville fired the first gun in the war with Spain. She is not a pretty boat at all. She is built differently from other vessels of her class, and her two tall funnels, or smokestacks, give her an ungainly appearance. Her commander was a splendid officer, though, and her crew were the bravest of the brave. I must tell you a little of her work after she captured the first prize of ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... on this particular morning was talking composedly to his wife, as she was about to climb to the saddle. His tent had been taken down, and soldiers were placing his furniture in a wagon. A greater contrast I never remarked, than the ungainly, awkward, and rough General, with his slight, trim, pretty companion. She had come to visit him and had remained until commanded to retire. I fancied, though I was separated some distance, that the little woman wept, as she kissed him good by, and he followed her, with frequent gestures of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... proportion as flaxseed; otherwise it rates in value the same as grain. A little, not too much, fed whole is well relished by fowls and is said to give luster to the plumage in fitting birds for shows. Sunflower is greatly overrated for poultry purposes. It is an ungainly plant of no use for forage and its seed is so well liked by the sparrows that the only way to keep them till ripe is to cover the heads ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Saxon. The nearest parallel to them is to be found in the imposts of the chancel arch at Worth in Sussex, a place far away from Roman sites. The Worth imposts, like the bases at Bosham, are huge and ungainly, testifying both to the general love of bigness in the Saxon builder and to his comparative ignorance of the normal features which in the eleventh century were everywhere else crystallising into Romanesque. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... nobody can tell what it means. To analyze it is to discover that it is extremely melodious; that it reflects a gloomy mood; that at the root of its sorrow is the mysterious "lost Lenore"; and that, as in most of Poe's works, a fantastic element is introduced, an "ungainly fowl" addressed with grotesque dignity as "Sir, or Madame," to divert attention from the fact that the poet's grief is not simple ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... various branches of the family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground, became marked by external features so peculiar. Why are the Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainly forms? Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white? Why the flat features of the Chinese, the small stature of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the lank features of their descendants, the Americans? ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... mind at his square ungainly house, full-fronting the afternoon sun. He tried to repress a shudder. 'I think, do you know, I ought to ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... one who became a singer of songs for the king. Him they called the Bug, because he was small and ungainly of face and limb and excelled not in work or deed. He loved the fattest marrow bones, the choicest fish, the milk warm from the goats, the first corn that was ripe, and the snug place by the fire. And thus, becoming singer of songs to the king, he found a way to do nothing and be ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... measure six feet from tip to tip of the wings, or about the size of a large Rhode Island turkey. Employing these birds for the removal of refuse is a remedy almost as bad as the disease, since the habits of the huge, ungainly, ill-omened creatures are extremely disgusting. Clouds of them roost upon the eaves of the houses, the church belfries, and all exposed balconies, and would invade the patios of the dwellings were they not vigorously ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... face of an old man on young shoulders. His hair was long, thin, and prematurely streaked with gray; his face was pale and deeply furrowed; his eyes were hollow, and their stare gleamed, cold and stolid, under his bent and shaggy brows. The figure was at once fragile and ungainly, and the narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop. It was a person, once noticed, that you would easily remember, and associate with some undefined, painful impression. The manner was humble, but not meek; the voice was whining, but without pathos. There was a meagre, passionless dulness about ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cartridge pointed at both ends. He had at his sides an immense number of little paddles that went flapping, flapping all the time, keeping him constantly in motion, whether the little fellow wanted to go or not. So he kept scudding along in the water, dodging from right to left, to avoid the ungainly creatures that wanted to eat him. There were crabs and clams, of a fashion that neither you nor I will ever see alive. There were huge animals with great eyes, savage jaws and long feelers, that sat in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... holds a scroll, the other rests upon a pedestal. The likeness is said to be well preserved. The sculptor was Bacon. There was the capacious forehead, the thick bushy eyebrows, the large mouth, the double chin, the clumsy person, and the thick, ungainly legs, which had been rendered familiar to me through the portraits which I had seen in the Johnsonia. As I gazed on that marble tribute to genius and worth, I could not but remember, Charley, how Johnson had frequently walked the streets of London all night, because he had not the wherewithal ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, not a girl. But as the score piled up in their favor, they grew more amiable and laughed good- humoredly at the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Though love's guerdon she defer, If her lover look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which you'll gaze in wonder. For a lady most ungainly For a halfpenny at night Will I cause without a light To look nor ill nor well too plainly. 50 To another loveliest, As star in heaven Shall this destiny be given That of noblest men and best None against her ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... own,—which is convincing evidence to non-Kelantan Malays that he is a born fool,—and he is apt to complain bitterly of the accents of strangers, whereas, to all but his own countrymen, it is his accent which appears to be the real grievance. He is plain of face, fat, ugly, and ungainly of body, huge as to the hands and feet, not scrupulously clean in his person and habits, and, like most very fleshy people, he is blessed with an exceedingly even temper, and is excessively happy, good-natured, and stolid. He ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... looked at the bridge, half sadly, half in reverie. He paused to admire the neat work; then slowly walked over the bridge still thinking deeply. Suddenly he plumped himself right into the arms of a tall, ungainly man, who had crossed from ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... puzzling his brain as to how he could raise the necessary funds to pay off his friend, he saw the tall, ungainly form of a backwoods planter shuffling down the ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... loves him; even if he never laid his hand (and this little thing he does rarely) on his friend's shoulder, it would be plain that he loves his friend. His happiness appears in his moody and charming face, his ambition in his dumbness, and the hopes of his life to come in ungainly bearing. How does so much heart, how does so much sweetness, all unexpressed, appear? For it is not only those who know him well that know the child's heart; strangers are aware of it. This, which he would not reveal, is the only thing that is quite unmistakable ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... ungainly figure and ungracious visage of Ebenezer presented themselves. The upper part of his form, notwithstanding the season required no such defence, was shrouded in a large great-coat, belted over his under habiliments, and crested with a huge cowl of the same stuff, which, when drawn over ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the older women in the rear, who with their heavy nailed boots were running towards us, plunging about in the deep ground in clumsy attempts at juvenile activity. A few of the young women were very pretty, but, as usual in Cyprus, their figures were ungainly, and their movements, hampered by baggy trousers and enormous high boots, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... anxious to part from the man and return with the news to Lady Chepstow, and was casting round in his mind for some excuse to avoid going indoors with him and wasting precious time in breaking bread and eating salt, when there lurched out of an adjoining doorway an ungainly figure in turban and sandals and the full flower of that grotesque regalia which passes muster at cheap theatres and masquerade balls for the costume of a Cingalese. The fellow had bent forward out of the deeper darkness of the house-passage into the murk ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... thousand conflicting feelings, Malcolm roamed up and down his chamber, writhed, tried to sit and think, then, finding his thoughts in a whirl, renewed his frantic pacings. And when dire necessity brought him again into the ladies' chamber, he was silent, blushing, ungainly, abstracted, and retreated into the farthest possible corner from ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the court, he frequently took part in the masques performed before it. Like the King, he was fully equipped for hunting; but greater contrast could not have been found than between his tall fine form and the King's ungainly figure. Sir Gilbert had remained behind with the rest of the courtiers in the chapel; but, calling him, James seized his arm, and set forward at his usual shambling pace. As he went on, nodding his head in return to the profound salutations of the assemblage, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... approached the ungainly woman doubtfully. Surely daddy could not have seen her before hiring this very peculiar-looking person. He must have accepted her services over the telephone, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle factory. Dickens would have given a touch of the grotesque to Grail's gentle but ungainly character; but at the end he would infallibly have rewarded him as Tom Pinch and Dominie Sampson were rewarded. Not so George Gissing. His sympathy is fully as real as that of Dickens. But his fidelity to fact is greater. Of the Christmas charity prescribed by Dickens, and of the untainted ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... reputation, but he lost the election in the Legislature, his party being in the minority. After his accession to the Presidency, his history, like Washington's, is identified with that of his country. He was a tall, ungainly man, little versed in the refinements of society, but gifted by nature with great common sense, and everywhere known as "Honest Abe." Kind, earnest, sympathetic, faithful, democratic, he was anxious only to serve his country. His wan, fatigued face, and his bent form, told of the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of these canine giants, however, was not at first very satisfactory, as although plenty of bone was obtained, many were most ungainly in appearance and ill-shaped animals that had very little about them to attract attention. Captain Graham, however, stuck to his work, and very soon the specimens that he brought forward began to show ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the knotted handkerchief in two. The hobo needed no urging. He spun on his heel and fled like a rabbit. The Professor watched him go, and as the fat, ungainly figure burst through a hedge and disappeared he fired the revolver into the air to frighten him still more. Then he tossed the weapon into the pool ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom. I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardener ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and crackling in a huge, yawning fire-place at its farthest extremity. She was chilled, and sat down before the glowing hearth to warm her benumbed fingers. Presently a tall woman, in a short-sleeved frock and large deer-skin moccasins, strode into the room, and with a deep, ungainly courtesy asked, "What the lady would be thinking to take for a ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sides of their mothers are so curious and so top heavy, and yet they are strong even when small. Carabao sometimes go crazy, and when they do, they tread down everything in their way. Notwithstanding their ungainly bulk they can run as well as a good horse, and can endure long journeys quite as well. They are urged to greater speed by the driver taking the tail and giving it a twist or kicking them in ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... by Tony Stickles' arrival in Glendow. He had always laughed at the lad, considering him a stupid, ungainly creature. Occasionally he had overtaken Tony on the road trudging wearily along, but it had never occurred to him to offer him a seat in his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... said, an unessential one, else the mood of the observer changes from happiness to unhappiness, and the comic becomes the pathetic. A fall on the ice which seemed to offer only a ludicrous contrast between the dignity and grace of the man erect and the ungainly attitude of the falling figure ceases utterly to be funny when it is seen to entail some physical injury; and wit which burns and sears is not amusing to its victim."[12] The ability to appreciate the humorous in life is a great gift and should ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... of the dead boy, the "grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird" peers with sidelong glance into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... to him during the service, came to him, as he passed out, to give him greeting and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if they had been wooden images. His spirit had been strained to its uttermost, and would bear no more. He made his way home with an ungainly, swift gait,—home to the dear bedside,—down upon his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... beauty of line of a well-shaped bust. I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot would probably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels, which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the body forward into an awkward and ungainly attitude. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... in these reflections, and continued eating with an abstracted air, Reine Vincart was rapidly examining the reserved, almost ungainly, young man, who did not dare address any conversation to her, and who was equally stiff and constrained with those sitting near him. She made a mental comparison of him with Claudet, the bold huntsman, alert, resolute, full ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... you would. I realise I seem ungrateful. I—" Of a sudden, interrupting, Chantry arose precipitately: a thin, ungainly figure in shiny, thread-bare broadcloth, exotic to the point of caricature. Unconsciously he started pacing back and forth across the room, restlessly, almost fiercely. Never in the years he had previously known the man had Landor seen him so, seen him other than the impassive, almost ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Olympus on the twelfth day she would win him over. Ascending to heaven, she obtained the promise of Zeus' assistance, not without raising the suspicions of Zeus' jealous consort Hera; a quarrel between them was averted by their son Hephaestus, whose ungainly performance of the duties of cupbearer to the Immortals made them forget ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Fians looked up and beheld upon the hillside a huge man, looking like some Fomorian marauder, black-visaged and ugly, with a sour countenance and ungainly limbs. On his back hung a dingy black shield, on his misshapen left thigh he wore a sharp broad-bladed sword; projecting over his shoulder were two long lances with broad rusty heads. He wore garments that looked as if they had been buried in a cinder heap, and a ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... to march. We tramped along under our bulky and ungainly loads, and found we were being escorted to the enclosure which we had fenced in. We swung through the gate, which was closed behind the last man, and a soldier mounted guard over it. In a flash the truth ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... happened to Andrew in a swirl. They were shaking hands with him. They were congratulating him on the killing of Bill Dozier. They were patting him on the back. Larry la Roche, who had been so hostile, now stood up to the full of his ungainly height and proposed his health. And the other men drank it standing. Andy received a tin cup half full of whisky, and he drank the burning stuff in acknowledgment. The unaccustomed drink went to his head, his muscles began to relax, his eyes swam. Voices boomed at him out of a haze. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... Africa with a composure and lordly grandeur, as if it were the most beautiful bird in the world. Its body feathers are of a dull metallic green color, and its wings and tail are dingy black. Looking at the awkward creature, no one would suspect that under its ungainly wings it carried the most exquisite and fairy-like little plumes, so airy that it takes basketfuls of them to weigh an ounce. They are pure white, and so much desired for trimming that the bird is vigorously hunted by the natives, who sell these dainty ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... necessary for a blind child, with proper instruction and careful training, to become awkward and ungainly, than for one in full possession of all the senses, the drawback of blindness simply demanding a little more patience and perseverance to attain the ease and grace, which is as ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... simplicity.' He speaks of the army of occupation as 'rascals in red coats waiting for embarkation.' 'English education,' he says in another letter, 'may be all very well to instruct the hemming of handkerchiefs, and the ungainly romps of a country-dance, but nothing else; and it would be a poor consolation to your declining years to see your daughters come into the room upon their elbows, and to find their accomplishments limited to broad native phraseology in conversation, or thumping the "Woodpecker" upon a discordant ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... His capacity was considerable; but fitter to discourse on general maxims, than to conduct any intricate business: his intentions were just; but more adapted to the conduct of private life than to the government of kingdoms. Awkward in his person, and ungainly in his manners, he was ill qualified to command respect; partial and undiscerning in his affections, he was little fitted to acquire general love. Of a feeble temper, more than of a frail judgment; exposed to our ridicule from his vanity; but exempt from our hatred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... suffer. A thing I found unbearable was the requirement to share my bed with another Hussar. The regulations allotted only one bed for two soldiers. N.C.O.s alone were allowed to have a bed each. On the first night which I spent in the barracks, I had already gone to my bed when a tall, ungainly Hussar, who arrived an hour after the others, approached it, and seeing that it was occupied, he unhooked a lantern and stuck it under my nose to examine me more closely. Then he got undressed. As I watched him, I had no idea that he intended to get in beside me; ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... board, one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly that can well be. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... by his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... being encouraged, he had his peculiar reason for delay, though now he could offer her wealth. She had once in his hearing derided the unpleasant hiss of the ungainly English matron's title of Mrs. There was no harm in the accustomed title, to his taste; but she disliking it, he did the same, on her special behalf; and the prospect, funereally draped, of a title ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... motions of hands and knees she drew herself a few steps back to one of the exclusive bunches of balsams, and began with her two hands to root it up. Actually she was grubbing, might and main, at the ungainly stalks of the balsams, pulling them up as fast as she could and flinging them aside, careless where. Daisy came to help with her trowel, and together they worked, amicably enough but without a word, till the task was done. A great space was left clear, and Molly threw herself back in her wonted position ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the general scheme in France towards the end of the fifteenth century. Under Henri IV and under Louis XII trees were often trimmed in ungainly, fantastic forms, but with the advent of Le Notre the good taste which he propagated so widely promptly rejected these grotesques, which, for a fact, were an importation from Flanders, like the gloriettes. Not by the remotest suggestion could a clipped yew in the form ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... as an ungainly man, and so he was; and yet on occasions he appeared to me to be superior in dignity and nobility to almost any other man whom I have ever seen. I was present when the committee from the National Convention, that gave his ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... a poor ungainly character, all awry, and not in a straight line." James certainly wrote a slovenly scrawl, strongly indicative of that personal negligence which he carried into all the little things of life; and Buchanan, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... have been a mistake, and most probably it was, as they fell in with the great body in the course of half an hour. The space from the quays, including the great sweep in front of the Custom-house, was swarming with men, and women, and small children, and the big ungainly crowd bulged out in Gardiner-street, and the broad space leading up Talbot-street. The ranks began to be formed at eleven o'clock amid a down-pour of cold rain. The mud was deep and aqueous, and great pools ran through the streets almost level with the paths. Some of the more prominent ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... of the antique statues, the smoked-up walls of the Sistine Chapel, and the cracks in Raphael's frescos. He condemns everything as rubbish which has not an external perfection; forgetting that, as in human nature, the most precious treasures are sometimes allied with an ungainly exterior. Yet in this he only echoes the impressions of thousands of others who have gone to the Vatican and returned disconsolate, because amid a perplexing multitude of objects they knew not ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and drew him out into the open. A few paces away stood a couple under a tree. And toward them Dolly hastened, now holding to the arm of her companion. Then he recognized Ann and saw that she was with a tall, ungainly young man of eighteen or twenty. The ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... king, in spite of the lateness of the hour, was ready to receive us, taking our two black friends, Aboh to act as interpreter, we carried with us the leopard skin, some venison, and three strings of beads of various colours. His majesty was a tall, ungainly looking man, with as hideous a countenance as can well be imagined. His appearance was not improved by the glare of the torchlight and the terror under which he was suffering. Having presented the leopard skin and venison, Charley, who acted as spokesman, threw ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... a good fellow. But there now—he doesn't satisfy the mistress, she says his appearance is ungainly. And now they've gone and told tales about him for letting some peasants into the kitchen yesterday. It is a bad look-out: they may dismiss him. And ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little Spanish, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... left on the skins. The sketch with this will explain better than any description. The guanaco pelt being of a woolly nature makes it unnecessary to run it all the same way and the entire skins are utilized in spite of their ungainly shape, the flaps and tabs trimmed off filling the indentations around the outer edge of the robe. They make an excellent camp blanket as light and warm as the malodorous, hairy rabbit skin robe of Hudsons Bay, and no Patagonian ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... best-mathematicians in England of his day, and was likewise deeply skilled in other branches of science and philosophy. The Greek language was as familiar to him as the English; he was said to know every line of Homer by heart. In public life, on the contrary, he was shy, ungainly, and embarrassed. From his first onset in Parliament, he took part with vehemence against the administration of Sir Robert Walpole." Bishop Secker says, that Lord Stanhope "spoke a precomposed speech, which he held in his hand, with great tremblings and agitations, and hesitated frequently ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... satirist is such a one as Hazlitt somewhere mentioned who called Wordsworth a dunce. Hazlitt was quite incapable of such a solecism. He knew, nobody better, that a telling caricature must be a good likeness. If he darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an ungainly feature, we still know that the shade exists and that the feature is not symmetrical. De Quincey reports the saying of some admiring friend of Hazlitt, who confessed to a shudder whenever Hazlitt used his habitual gesture of placing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to repress it. Yet not for the world would my father have grudged him anything that money could purchase. That was, as it were, in the bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was lumpish and loutish, awkward and ungainly, marring whatever he meddled in, and many a hard word and sharp scolding did he get from the people about the farm, who hardly waited till my father's back was turned before they rated the stepson. I am ashamed—my ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ungainly critic has observed that the poet himself seems to have felt a doubt on the matter, because he has supplemented the dubious moonbeams by the "lantern dimly burning." The more generous, if somewhat a sanguine remark has been also made, that "the time will come when the evidence ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the clayey roads of the Ornain Valley are anything but inviting wheeling; but a longer stay in Tronville is not to be thought of, for, among other pleasantries of the place here, the chief table delicacy appears to be boiled escargots, a large, ungainly snail procured from the neighboring hills. Whilst fond of table delicacies, I emphatically draw the line at escargots. Pulling out toward Toul I find the roads, as expected, barely ridable; but the vineyard-environed little valley, lovely in its tears, wrings from one praise in spite ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... fountains are few enough for it, even though one is that famous Fountain of Bernini, in which he has made one of the usual rivers—the Nile, I believe—holding his hand before his eyes in mock terror of the ungainly facade of a rival architect's church opposite, lest it shall fall and crush him. That, however, is the least merit of the fountain; and without any fountain the Piazza Navona would be charming; it is such a vast lake of sunshine and is so wide as well as long, and is so mellowed with ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Pompey Taylor. But the T. Tallman Taylor, whose whole appearance was pronounced unexceptionable by the New York belles, from the points of his boots to the cut of his moustaches, was a very different individual from the good-looking, but awkward, ungainly youth, introduced to the reader two or three years since, at Wyllys-Roof. He had, in the mean time, learned how to stand, how to sit, how to walk, how to talk in a drawing-room. He had learned what to do with his cane and his hat, how to manage his pocket-handkerchief and his gloves; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... all smiles, and Toby returned her welcome something sheepishly. He cut a quaint figure with his broad, ungainly shoulders supporting his rather pumpkin face. Then his arms were a little too long and terminated ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... exceed the capacities of a normal body." It was eloquence particularly well calculated to sway a popular assembly which yet had none of the characteristics of a mob. A sonorous voice; a figure and bearing which, though stiff and ungainly, were singularly dignified; an inexhaustible copiousness of grandiloquent phrase; a peculiar vein of sarcasm which froze like ice and cut like steel—these were some of the characteristics of the oratory which from 1782 to 1806 at once awed and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... cast a quick glance at the somewhat ungainly figure of Father John. Another disappointment—not the father he was waiting for. But the luminous eyes of the preacher seemed to pierce into the boy's soul. When he looked once, he looked again. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their acidity—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and believing that the world was made in six days, was one woman; but Mrs. Maloney, standing with bare arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine trees, was another; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian pupil, with his pale skin, and his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very unfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a knife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... and laid under the day of God's power, when Christ is opening his ear to discipline, and speaking to him that his heart may receive instruction, many times that poor man is as if the devil had found him, and not God. How frenzily he imagines; how crossly he thinks; how ungainly he carries it under convictions, counsels, and his present apprehension of things! I know some are more powerfully dealt withal, and more strongly bound at first by the word; but others more in an ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... they use that word) a goodly number of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being dragged thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to see the householder lifting his axe against ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... may be likened to A desert ship. (This is not new.) He is a most ungainly craft, With frowning turrets fore and aft We little realize on earth, How much we owe to his great girth, For should he ever shrink so small As through the needle's eye to crawl, Rich men might climb the golden stairs And so leave nothing to ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... woods with Jack and his rifle. And he hungered for spring to come again when he should go with the Turner boys to take another raft of logs down the river to the capital. Spring came, and going out to the back pasture one morning, Chad found a long-legged, ungainly creature stumbling awkwardly about his old mare—a colt! That, too, he owed the Major, and he would have burst with pride had he known that the colt's sire was a famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go down the river again. He did not let the Major know he was coming ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... suits. The boats were next. They were typical landing craft, shaped like rectangular boxes. There was no need for streamlining in the vacuum of space. They were not pressurized. Only men in space suits rode in the ungainly boxes. ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... any other Chinese restaurant, my hosts at least, who had not learned that bananas are sustenance for men as well as "food for gods," were famished. As we ate "clem pie" or "dined with Duke Humphrey," two water buffaloes, dark gray ungainly forms, with little more hair than elephants, recurved horns, and muzzles like deer, watched us closely, until a Tartar drove them off. Such beasts, which stand in the water and plaster themselves with mud like elephants, are the cows and draught oxen of China. Two nice Chinese boys sat by us, and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... flock around the deathbed of a defaulting deacon. A soldier on the outer edge of the extended line swings his rifle with swift, backhanded motion over his shoulder, and brings the butt amidst the crowd of carrion. The vultures hop with grotesque, ungainly motions from their prey, and stand with wings extended and clawed feet apart, their necks outstretched and curved heads dripping slime and blood, a fitting setting amidst the black ruin of war. The ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... come, and on every slope graze herds of winter-worn gun-horses and transport mules. The new grass has gone to the heads of the latter and they make continuous exhibitions of themselves, gambolling about like ungainly lambkins and roaring with unholy laughter. Summer has come, and my groom and countryman has started to whistle again, sure sign that Winter is over, for it is only during the Summer that he reconciles himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... the quaint little train on to the flower-bedecked platform of this Devonshire hamlet amongst the hills, to receive a surprise so immeasurable that for a moment he could do nothing but gaze silently at the tall, ungainly figure whose unpleasant smile betrayed the fact that this meeting was not altogether accidental so ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... most ungainly figure. His gait is awkward, his gestures clumsy, his eyes are covered with large spectacles. He is careless of his dress. His pockets bulged with papers. He spoke rapidly and with a strong Irish ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting separated from the fighting ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet, life-size, indeed, but how different from life's colour or life's comeliness! In that position I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was still barren, when suddenly the right arm of the statue descended like lightning, and the harpoon shot perpendicularly into the pool with the speed of an arrow. What river-fiend answered to the summons? In an instant an enormous pair of open jaws appeared, followed by the ungainly head and form of the furious hippopotamus, who, springing half out of the water, lashed the river into foam, and, disdaining the concealment of the deep pool, he charged straight up the violent rapids. With extraordinary power ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... would not have gone on. And; had he turned back then, the history of a certain kingdom of Europe would have been changed. Maps, too, and schoolbooks, and the life-story of a small Prince. But he went on. Stronger than his young guide, he did not crawl, but bent aside the stiff and ungainly branches of the firs. He battled with the thicket, and came out victorious.. He was not so old, then, or so feeble. His arm would have been strong for the King, had not— "There ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from the uniform of a parcel of drunken marines sent ashore on a holiday from a man-of-war. But, in spite of the ornaments, the dress was not exactly the thing. From the tightness of the cloth across the shoulders, his elbows projected from his sides, like an ungainly rider's; and his ponderous legs were jammed so hard into his slim, nether garments that the threads of every seam showed; and, at every step, you looked for ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... true that all men—even critics—have their redeeming points and failings, then was there no Charles and no Joseph Surface at this unique matinee. For the ungainly gentleman who essayed the part of Charles made, or rather meant to make, him spotless; and Mr. Henley's Joseph was twin-brother to Mr. Irving's Mephistopheles. Perhaps the idea of Mr. Labouchere and his friend, Mr. Henley, was that they would make one young man between them. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... belated flake passed now and again across the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, I passed in great shining curves steeper and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... up with elbows flapping loosely, as was his ungainly habit. His grin was wide and golden as of yore, his hat at the same angle over ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... and he was greatly concerned as to what would become of his attendant, who would thus be left in a foreign country without the means of leaving it, or of obtaining support. My father had not been favourably impressed by the appearance of Mr Laffan, who was tall and gaunt, with awkward manners and ungainly figure; but after some conversation he found him to be a man of considerable attainments and intelligence, and ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... her co-Vestals were immediately liked and speedily loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes, pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement asserted that she was tired, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... suppressed characters of history. His political achievements, as is perhaps natural in a community which courts the voter and despises the soldier, have put out of sight the means by which he mainly won them; namely his genius as a cavalry and partisan commander. An ungainly, narrow-minded, bigoted, bucolic squireen of Huntingdon, lacking in every quality which we are accustomed to associate with a cavalry officer, inaugurated an era in the history of Mounted Troops. His methods are studied on the Continent, and the German ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... not, however, so very little, for it was of ungainly sprawling structure, pushing out an odd limb that might have been cut off with a curtain. The walls nodded fixedly to one another so that the ceiling was only half the size of the floor. The furniture comprised but the commonest necessities. This attic of the Ansells ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... extract from him some hint as to what he should do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupants of the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurse held the lamp carelessly, resting her hand over one hip thrown out, her figure drooping into an ungainly pose. She gazed at the surgeon steadily, as if puzzled at his intense preoccupation over the common case of a man "shot in a row." Her eyes travelled over the surgeon's neat-fitting evening dress, which was so bizarre here in the dingy receiving ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a large farm with immense fields, the ponderous and ungainly steam, tackle gives one a sensation of intrusion. Such a field can be found on a farm between Evesham and Alcester; it contains 300 acres. The occupier, speaking of it, mentioned that it was all wheat that year except one corner. To a ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Marchese Sanviano entered with Cesare Orsi. The window was deserted, and the women trailed gracefully toward the bubbling minor note of the alcohol lamp. Both Sanviano and Orsi were big men—the former, like Bembo, wore English clothes; but Orsi's ungainly body had been tightly garbed by a Southern military tailor, making him—Lavinia thought—appear absolutely ridiculous. His collar was both too tight and too high, although perspiration ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... life in courts and palaces, in fields and villages, is all seen there. Royal folk in wonderful jewels sit enthroned, with minions offering gifts and burning incense before them warriors kneeling and maidens dancing. The peasant ploughs the rice-fields with the same wooden stick and ungainly buffalo, and carries the rice-sheaves from the harvest field with the same shoulder poles, used in all the farther East to-day. Women fill their water-vessels at the tanks and bear them away on their heads as in India now, and scores ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... begin under the roof of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick and mortar which make the colleges of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the man had made a brave effort, and he walked at once to his camel and mounted, Frank standing by as the ungainly beast see-sawed to and fro and sprawled out its legs, and grumbled and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and bright-looking—Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, swarthy of complexion, dark ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... said Warburton, a tall ungainly boy of fourteen, as boy after boy was eager to take the quarrel ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... Culver's voice held all the pride of a child with a new toy, but he released the grip, and the ungainly gun swung smoothly back ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... of herons stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound greeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came. It was the daily train from the East, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... some eight feet in diameter. The lower edge of this hole stood about six inches above the level of the pool, and water ran out of it in a thin stream. Passing down this stream, half swimming and half waddling, appeared that huge and ungainly reptile which was the real object of the worship of the People ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Dryden, assuming the wreath in 1689. We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642 as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age. Derrick assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,—a description answering to the full-length of Og. The commentators upon "MacFlecknoe" have not made due use of one of Shadwell's habits, in illustration of the reason why a wreath of poppies was selected for the crown of its hero. The dramatist, Warburton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... your chintz. Have two rolls made, to use at the head and foot (which are now of equal height) and cover these and the bed with chintz, or, if preferred, with sun-proof material in one of the other colours in your chintz. By this treatment your cheap iron bed of ungainly proportions, has attained the quality of an interesting, as well as ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... learned lawyer, a generous friend; and his interest in education led him to make several gifts and bequests for educational purposes, including the foundation of a free grammar school at Redgrave. His figure was very corpulent and ungainly. Elizabeth visited him several times at Gorhambury, and had previously visited him at Redgrave. He was twice married and by his first wife, Jane, had three sons and three daughters. His second wife was Anne (d. 1610), daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, by whom he had two sons. Bacon's eldest ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... lose flesh daily, from pure lack of provender. However, there was no time to make a change, so I was fain to hope that easy journeys at first, and a light weight on his back, might gradually bring the ungainly beast into better form. It appeared that he was just recovering from the distemper and "sore tongue," which had followed each other in rapid succession. These two diseases are the terror and bane of Virginian and Maryland stables. An animal who has once surmounted them ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... here I kept a craft, half boat and half punt, which I used for my fishing, and in which mother and Kate could lie on cushions while I rowed them on the river on warm summer nights. It was heavy and ungainly, but very comfortable, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... been provided by Tony, was towed to the shore, where an abundance of rocks were to be had. It was their intention to load it with "lighthouse material," and tow it to the island. It required all their skill to accomplish this object, for the raft was a most ungainly thing to manage. The Zephyr was so long that they could not row round so as to bring the raft alongside the bank, and when they attempted to push it in, the paint, and even the planks of the boat, ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... himself before the King, overwhelming him with blessings, and these royal commands were in due course executed. So it came about that Lesueur's frescos led to startling revelations, and enabled the Carthusians to keep their splendid property intact, ungainly though this was and out ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the brutes stood with stiffly erected ears, then they poured from the grove toward the river's bank, covering the distance with great, ungainly leaps. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him he would not put it in his power to give him the slip again, held fast by his arm during the remaining part of the entertainment, to the no small diversion of the company, whose attention was altogether engrossed in the contemplation of such an awkward, ungainly, stalking apparition. At last Pickle, being tired of exhibiting this raree-show, complied with the repeated desires of his companion, and handed her into the coach; which he himself had no sooner entered, than they were surrounded by a file of musqueteers, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... ill-luck had not been eluded. The airship was moored upon a raft which was to be towed out into the lake to enable the dirigible to ascend. But something went wrong with the arrangements. A strong wind caught the ungainly airship, she dipped her nose into the water, and as the motor was set going she was driven deeper into the lake, the vessel only being saved by ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... maladroit, gawky, inelegant, ungainly, loutish, unskillful, unwieldy, uncourtly; embarrassing. Antonyms: graceful, dexterous, deft, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... rolled the huge carcass down the river to a point below Rainbow Falls, within sight of his mother's home, where she could view daily the evidence that none might threaten her and live. And there the ungainly form lies today—a long, black-rock island known as Moo Kuna, between the rapids—where every freshet, every heavy rain, beats upon it as though in everlasting punishment for plotting the death ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... out upon her neck in a great ruff, which accentuated the fiendish ferocity of her, adding a hyena-like slope to her ungainly body. But it was in the expression of her face that she reached the climax of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the walls of which were adobe, and it was indescribably filthy; yet the place was laid out with some pretension to regularity, being divided up into several wide streets, while in the centre of the town there was a wide, open space, or square, one side of which was occupied by a hideous and ungainly idol of gigantic proportions, with a long sacrificial altar at its feet, while on the other three sides stood dwellings of such pretentious character that they could only belong to the chief dignitaries ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Must I wear up the rags Of mortal perished beauty and be old? Or is there power left upon my mouth Like colour, and lilting of ruin in my eyes? Am I still rare enough to be your mate? Then why must I shame at feasts and bear myself In shy ungainly ways, made flushed and conscious By squat numb gestures of my shapeless head— Ay, and its wagging shadow—clouted up, Twice tangled with a bundle of hot hair, Like a thick cot-quean's in the settling time? There are few women in the Quarter now Who do not wear a shapely fine-webbed ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... this performance is, of its kind, most complete. Keeley's Snozzle was quiet, rich, and philosophical; and Saunders made a Judy of himself with unparalleled success. Frank Finch got his deserts in the hands of a Mr. Everett; for being a lover, no matter how awkward and ungainly an actor is made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... new ways so easily that those who do not have this faculty have no explanation for it but that of fickleness. A frequent surprise to a missionary in Japan is that of meeting a fine-looking, accomplished gentleman whom he knew a few years before as a crude, ungainly youth. I am convinced that it is the possession of this set of characteristics that has enabled Japan so quickly to assimilate many ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... by his humming; but he stopped short in an improvised variation on the theme of Vulcan's song in "Philemon and Baucis" when he heard a subdued but none the less poignant cry of distress from Joan. In order to turn his head he was compelled to twist his ungainly body, and Joan, who was standing well away from her canvas, was aware of the movement. She ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the flocks of Phoebus ever began life as a more ungainly duckling than Ibsen did. The ingenuity of biographers has done its best to brighten up the dreary record of his childhood with anecdotes, yet the sum of them all is but a dismal story. The only talent which ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... and without alarm, though so weird an object might well have aroused a pardonable distrust, and even timidity. He saw a misshapen dwarf, not quite four feet high, with large, ungainly limbs out of all proportion to his head, which was small and compact. His features were of almost feminine fineness, and from under his shaggy brows gleamed a restless pair of large, full, wild blue eyes. His thick, rough flaxen hair was long and curly, and hung in disordered ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... than boys and are actually taller and heavier than boys at corresponding ages. From fifteen onward, however, the boys rapidly outstrip the girls in growth. Lack of muscular co-ordination is responsible for the awkward movements, ungainly appearance, ungraceful carriage, with their attendant self-consciousness, so characteristic of both boys and girls in ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of these cheap urns and obelisks for his employers' retailing. But the question why numberless people will profane the memory of their departed by these public advertisements of Slap & Dash, and their evil trade, is a more difficult problem. For surely nothing could be more unmeaning or more ungainly than the monumental urn, unless it be the monumental obelisk. The plain cross, by contrast, has the tenderest meaning, and is a simple and fitting monument ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... grizzled veteran of the Franco-Prussian war, the breast of his rusty velveteen jacket proudly bearing a row of medals, stood talking to Mrs. Frayling, hat in hand. His right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly attitude, and yet they were wonderful hands, strong and sensitive, the colour of ivory. His eyes were small and green, sharp as the eyes of a lizard. They seemed to take in everything and ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... into my school, I will do my utmost. I do not mind simple manners, for the noblest natures are to be found among such people; nor do I mind rough, ungainly clothing, for that, indeed, only belongs to the outward girl and can quickly be remedied. I will keep these girls, and do all that woman can for them, provided I see no deceit in any of them; but that, you will clearly understand, ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... a second visit, and so much experience as my opportunities afforded, enter my protest against the sweeping ridicule it has pleased some writers to cast upon these doings here; since I saw none of those outrageously unpresentable women, or coarsely habited and ungainly men, so amusingly arrayed by some of my more observant predecessors. I can only account for it by referring to the rapid changes ever taking place here, and to which I have alluded in my introduction ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... dirty as his master was clean. I felt a certain envious reverence for this unprepossessing youth, seeing in him a much more efficient counterpart of myself; but how he and his little master ever managed to work their ungainly vessel was a miracle I never understood. Phlegmatically impervious to rain and cold, he steered the Johannes down the long grey reaches in the wake of the tug, while we and Bartels held snug gatherings down ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... become the servant of Jesus. It is said of the great John Hunt, that when a young man, he gave no promise of the talents he shewed in the work of the Ministry. We have spoken with one who knew him before his conversion, who made us smile as he described his gait and style of life. Yet this ungainly ploughboy became a man whom to know was to admire. It was in Christ's hands, though, he improved ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... blackberries and chestnuts and lilies and cardinal and other rare flowers. We used to call him Trainer Thoreau, because the boys called the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure. He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... humor. Once, indeed, he was touched to the quick by a piece of schoolboy pertness. After playing on the flute, he spoke with enthusiasm of music, as delightful in itself, and as a valuable accomplishment for a gentleman, whereupon a youngster, with a glance at his ungainly person, wished to know if he considered himself a gentleman. Poor Goldsmith, feelingly alive to the awkwardness of his appearance and the humility of his situation, winced at this unthinking sneer, which long rankled in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... scarce begun to die away towards Shoreby, before fresh hoofs came echoing in their wake, and another deserter clattered down the road; this time a single rider, and, by his splendid armour, a man of high degree. Close after him there followed several baggage-waggons, fleeing at an ungainly canter, the drivers flailing at the horses as if for life. These must have run early in the day; but their cowardice was not to save them. For just before they came abreast of where the lads stood wondering, a man in hacked armour, and seemingly beside himself with fury, overtook the waggons, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fact a sickly narrow-faced young man with thick obstinate lips and a slight lameness that made his walk ungainly; but though no way resembling the ermine-cloaked king of the chapel at Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state wig and his orders. As for the newly married Duchess, who sat at the other end of the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... felt at home. Ignacio's mother, a lady with white hair, was always making stockings, and after dinner she recited the rosary with the maid; Alzugaray's sister, Celedonia, a tall ungainly lass, was ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... sent his rough boots flying, one after the other, across the room, and then, without more ado, curled up his ungainly figure on the settle, and before Humphrey could have believed it possible, he was snoring loudly, his arm thrown under his head, and his tawny red locks in a tangled mass, spread upon the softest cushion on which the cowboy ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... of the town, where gaudily painted door jambs and window frames and wonderfully prosperous gardens proclaim the immigrant from sunny Italy. Not infrequently an old warehouse, store, or church is transformed into an ungainly and evil-odored barracks, housing scores of men who do their own washing and cooking. Those who do not dwell in the cities are at work in construction camps—for the Italian has succeeded the Irishman as the knight of the pick and shovel. The great bulk of these swarthy, singing, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... hour ago, Dr. Knott, "under plea of waiting cases, had hitched his ungainly, thick-set figure into ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... called a leather tongue. At the back of the boot is a small strap, which is used to fasten the ski heel-strap securely to the boot. Once fixed on the ski, the foot is so secure no fall can loosen it, and the only way to extricate the foot is to undo the three straps. Outside these huge ungainly hair stockings and strangely comfortable boots very thick gaiters are worn. It is very necessary to keep the feet and legs warm in such a cold land as Norway, where the mercury freezes oft-times in the thermometers, and snow six or seven feet deep covers the land sometimes ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the victim than to anger against the cause. Again, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... two individuals of very ungainly aspect came there. Each had his arm upon the other's shoulder; both were ill-dressed. They said these words, 'Thou owest me nothing. I really owe thee. If we dispute in this way, here is the king who ruleth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... more slowly, as if overcome by the effort which he had been forced to make, and seemed scarcely able to totter onward, stumbling at every stone. But with the change of direction, his life came back to him, and with a whisk of his tail and an ungainly flourish of his hind legs, he started off at a trot, turning neither to the right nor the left, but only intent ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... shaped, ill-proportioned; crooked &c (distorted) 243; hard featured, hard visaged; ill-favored, hard-favored, evil-favored; ill-looking; unprepossessing, unattractive, uninviting, unpleasing. graceless, inelegant; ungraceful, ungainly, uncouth, stiff; rugged, rough, gross, rude, awkward, clumsy, slouching, rickety; gawky; lumping, lumpish^; lumbering; hulky^, hulking; unwieldy. squalid, haggard; grim, grim faced, grim visaged; grisly, ghastly; ghost like, death like; cadaverous, grewsome^, gruesome. frightful, hideous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Henry might be good for, people thought that to call himself a lawyer was a mere laughing matter. An awkward, stooping, ungainly fellow, dressed roughly in leather breeches and yarn stockings, and not knowing even how to pronounce the king's English correctly, how could he ever succeed in a learned profession? As a specimen of his manner of speech at that time we are told that once, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... distance. "I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to a poor ungainly devil of a student, and his name ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle |
