"Inelegant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surrounding a grass stem, will be seen an object which is unpleasantly familiar to most country folks—that salivary mass variously known by the libellous names of "snake-spit," "cow-spit," "cuckoo-spit," "toad-spit," and "sheep-spit," or the inelegant though expressive substitute of "gobs." The foam-bath pavilion of the "spume-bearer," with his glittering, bubbly domicile of suds, is certainly familiar to most of my readers; but comparatively few, I find, have cared to investigate the mysterious mass, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... American professional seeker after the night romance of Paris, the French have a phrase which, be it soever inelegant, retains still a brilliant verity. The phrase is "une belle poire." And its Yankee ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... of which stands Booth, and in the other Edmund Kean. To the mind of the satirist there appears to be no difference in the abilities of the two performers, as the scales exactly balance. On the right, the portico of Covent Garden is overshadowed by the inelegant but massive proportions of Drury Lane; the intervening space being occupied by various figures and details, among which is a "patent clapping machine." An advertisement board carried by one of the figures clearly shows that the satire—an elaborate idea badly worked out—has reference to the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... two inelegant syllables, on the second of which her uncontrollable voice rose. "My brother Otho, a ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... young man's inability to clothe his splendid body in that fashion which her culture demanded. His simple and primitive views of life—as natural as the instinct which governs all creatures in his God-cultivated world—were now unrefined, ignoble, inelegant. His fine nature and unembarrassed intelligence, which found in the wealth of realities amid which he lived abundant food for his intellectual life, and which enabled him to see clearly, observe closely and think with such ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... innate; and by virtue of those moulding forces he was doing his best to be an English gentleman. That mysterious impulse which compels the young male to make objectionable imputations against seemly lives and to write rare inelegant words upon clean and decent things burnt almost intolerably within him, and equally powerful now was the gross craving he had acquired for personal association with all that is prominent, all that is successful, all that is of good report. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... flying and bands playing: the old brave way was impossible in the face of machine guns. The pomp and pageantry of battle had departed and there was nothing left but for the attacking party to crawl in a most inelegant fashion ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... of everyday experience, which deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet is rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars, and yet sweeps all away in the forthright current of the narrative,—such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The first and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performed throughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be childishly awkward, the matter has been transformed ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... was the first to come out of it, responding to her voice a good deal as if she dashed cold water in his face, his eyes breaking away from Barbara's, his lips parted in a nervous smile. He ran a hand through his hair—an inelegant gesture for him at ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... drama, and the common rock on which their poets made shipwreck.[27] Let us, however, rejoice for the sake of the critical reputation of Vauvenargues that he was unable to read Shakespeare. One for whom Moliere is too eccentric, grotesque, inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but most ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... good deal of this was rumor rather than fact: an uncharitable interpretation of pleasures which were inelegant, certainly, but possibly not quite vicious. Still, it seemed to be pretty well established that up to the time of Sylvia's marriage her father never worked, and that he always had money—and this condition, on any frontier, is always ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... stump of his cigarette into the fire, stretched himself as he rose, and remained so long in the inelegant attitude that my eyes mounted from his body to his face; a second later they had followed his eyes across the room, and I also was on my legs. On the threshold of the folding doors that divided bedroom and sitting-room, a well-built man stood in ill-fitting broadcloth, and bowed to us ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... long held in suspense; a volley of inelegant phrases saluted his ears, while the thong of a hunting-whip twisted playfully about his leg. Finding the play unequal, he wisely gave up the game—by dropping his bird on one side, and himself on the other; at the same time reluctantly ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... certain small words are in the language for a purpose. "And," "a," "the," are important, and their elimination often makes a letter bald, curt, and distinctly inelegant. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... auditors were the keeper of the cafe, a stupid and silent beer-cask, always in his sleeved vest, and remarkable only for his carved pipe; the bailiff, a scoffer, dressed invariably in black, scorned for his inelegant habit of carrying off what remained of his sugar; the town-clerk, the gentleman of acrostics, a person of much amiability and a feeble constitution, who sent to the illustrated journals solutions of enigmas and rebuses; and, lastly, the veterinary ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Eliautes are small and inelegant as compared with the tents of well-to-do Koords, and the physique and general appearance of the Eliautes themselves is vastly inferior to the magnificent fellows that we found loafing about the headquarters of the Koordish sheikhs in Asia Minor and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a homely, but significant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Committee is quite right in remarking that the language of this important rubric, as set forth by the Convention of 1883, is "inelegant and inaccurate," but another diocese has called attention to the fact that the substitute which Maryland offers would, if adopted, enable any rector who might be so minded to withhold entirely from the non-communicating portion ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... the professor's class had used the figures of speech too frequently employed by Rosamond, he would have received a dignified rebuke for "hyperbolical and inelegant language;" but it never occurred to the deluded man that anything but pearls of thought and diamonds of speech could fall from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... defined and established. To the magic word "reporter," accompanied by the flourish of a pencil and a roll of paper, the three policemen smiled obsequiously, and unbarred the way. Seeing how well this plan worked, two gentlemen of inelegant leisure, and at least one pickpocket, provided themselves with rolls of paper and pencils, and, giving ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Ben Jonson in extreme corpulence, and proposed him for the model of dramatic writing, seems to have affected the coarse and inelegant debauchery of his prototype. He lived chiefly in taverns, was a gross sensualist in his habits, and brutal in his conversation. His fine gentlemen all partake of their parent's grossness and vulgarity; they usually open ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... quirk in human nature that shows great gratification at the sight of a man betting on something where he is bound to be the loser: in inelegant language, this relates simply to the universal impulse to laugh at a "sucker." It is just like standing in front of a sideshow tent after you have paid your good money, gone in, and been "stung," and laughing at everyone else who pays his good money, comes out, and has been equally "stung." ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... former suggests a type of behavior which is artless, spontaneous, and free from the restraints of custom. The latter implies fully as great lack of knowledge of social usage, and, in addition, conduct which is primitive and perchance inelegant. Thus, the.................. youth was the first to enter the car, and his.................. little sister warmly kissed him in the presence of the king. We may also say that a country boy is.................. with respect to city ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... hut, and told me to follow them. I readily complied. But here a new difficulty occurred. The Moors, accustomed to a loose and easy dress, could not reconcile themselves to the appearance of my NANKEEN BREECHES, which they said were not only inelegant, but, on account of their tightness, very indecent; and as this was a visit to ladies, Ali ordered my boy to bring out the loose cloak which I had always worn since my arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it close round me. We visited the tents of four different ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... and Method. His style is "abrupt, uneven, inelegant," but also poetical, figurative and abounding in metaphors. His writings must be interpreted with great care to get what is meant by his symbolic speech. He reminds one of modern reformers and revivalists. Through all ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... we do maintain is, that much of the most popular poetry in the world owes its celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and that no poetry can be long or generally acceptable, the language of which is coarse, inelegant, or infantine. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... thus when the last note had soared up and died, the old man folded his hands and began to pray. It was an old-fashioned prayer, such as the girl had never heard from the Bishop's lips; ungrammatical, inelegant, and long. A quiet talk with God, manly in its straightforward confession of short-comings, childlike in its appeal for guidance, fervent in its gratitude for all good gifts, and the crowning one of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... lily of the valley is substituted for the sunflower, in the children's esteem, and there is generated a taste for the exquisite. The copy of the masterpiece of art supplants the bizarre chromo; correct forms of speech take the place of incorrect forms; the elegant usurps the place of the inelegant; and the inartistic gives place to the artistic. The circle of their wants is extended until it includes their needs, and these, in turn, are transformed into wants. Thus all the pupils ascend to a higher level of appreciation of the things that make ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... Landor.—He is not inelegant, but he is unimpassioned and affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ages ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... see into what a predicament your precious advice has brought me; how much more practical my own arrangement was! The handkerchief looked inelegant, if you like, but it would have prevented me this trouble. Why did I swerve from my principles? Why was I led astray by other ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... held its August meeting at the Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... with whom we once travelled thought he was roughing it daily for the space of three weeks, because he was obliged to lunch on cold chicken and un-iced Champagne, and when it rained he was forced to seek shelter inside very inelegant hotels on the road. To rough it, in the best sense of that term, is to lie down every night with the ground for a mattress, a bundle of fagots for a pillow, and the stars for a coverlet. To sleep in a tent is semi-luxury, and tainted with too much effeminacy to suit the ardor of a first-rate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... idealist reversed. The etching of him by Loys Delteil is thus described by a sympathetic commentator: "Daumier was very broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightly sunken eyes, which must, however, have had an extraordinary power of penetration. Though the nose is a little heavy and inelegant, the projecting forehead, unusually massive like that of Victor Hugo or of Beethoven and barred with a determined furrow, reveals the great thinker, the man of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long hair, thrown backward, adds to the expression of the fine head; and finally the beard worn ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... senatorial, popular, or judicial. These different styles of eloquence were represented by the grave and dignified debates of the Senate, the impassioned and often noisy and inelegant harangues of the Forum, and the learned pleadings or ingenious appeals of the courts. Among the orators of ancient Rome, Hortensius, (114-50 B.C.), an eloquent advocate, and Cicero (106-43 B.C.) ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... sericea, OLIV.) excels the Banded Epeira in the manufacture of big hunting-nets, but she is less gifted in the art of nest-building. She gives her nest the inelegant form of an obtuse cone. The opening of this pocket is very wide and is scalloped into lobes by which the edifice is slung. It is closed with a large lid, half satin, half swan's-down. The rest is a stout white fabric, frequently covered ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the lacquey who had been standing behind the future ambassador wiped the latter's nose; and well it was that he did so, since otherwise an inelegant and superfluous drop would have been added to the soup. After that the conversation turned upon the joys of a quiet life—though occasionally it was interrupted by remarks from the hostess on the subject ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... questionable judiciousness, seeing that a large crop of Latinity by no means creditable to Italian scholarship has been the result. It would have been better to stick to good Della-Cruscan Italian, or to have employed some English school-usher to come here as resident reviser of Roman Latinity. Inelegant and even ungrammatical inscriptions, however, do not interfere with the general picturesqueness of the spot, or with its singular adaptation to show to advantage the remarkable scene enacted there on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... come from folks don't step so lively as they do up here, and old Colonel Tayloes, he used to say there ain't nothin' so inelegant as hurry, lessen 'tis worry. But of course I shouldn't have had no discussion in my mind about that bell. I got a ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... commentators of Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... long train ride, the excitement, the cold wait on the station platform and the subsequent warmth of the room, the hearty meal, all these combined to make for sleepiness so overpowering that several times the boy had caught his nose descending toward his plate in a most inelegant nod. But it hurt his pride to think his grandfather had ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to confess it, these two inelegant objects on a very elegant piece of furniture are the hero and heroine of ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... deck frame held the Union Jack, the yacht ensign and the club burgee. All in all, the Adventurer was a smart and finely appointed craft, and a capable one, too. Steve's father had had her built only a little more than a year ago and she had seen but scant service. In the inelegant but expressive phraseology of Perry, "she was a rip-snorting corker of a boat." The consensus of opinion was to the effect that Mr. Chapman was "a peach to let them have it," and there was an unuttered impression that that kind-hearted gentleman ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and his grandson Moses continued the line of faithful but inelegant translators. Judah had turned into Hebrew the works of Bachya, Ibn Gebirol, Jehuda Halevi, Ibn Janach, and Saadiah. Samuel was the translator of Maimonides, and bore a brave part in the defence of his master ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... lay all our loves and fortunes—was ever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairy scamps the Irish—never German boor so inelegant—but venomous in their courage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Our lads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with the dirk ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... evil spirits, who were supposed to take upon themselves, at these unhallowed altars, the names and characters of these foul deities. Not only, therefore, the temple of Cybele, with its gigantic portico, its huge and inelegant statues, and its fantastic hieroglyphics, was thrown down and defaced when the empire was converted to the Christian faith, but the very ground on which it stood was considered as polluted and unhallowed; and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... critics stupid enough to say that Balzac knew nothing of the art of painting young girls; they make use of the inelegant, unpolished word rate to qualify his portraits of this genre. To be sure, Balzac's triumph is, we admit, in his portraits of mothers or passionate women who know life. Certain authors, without counting George Sand, have given us sketches of young girls far superior to Balzac's, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... profession of his first-born was concerned. He never knew that. I got rather intimate with the Youson family by degrees, although our acquaintance had begun so inauspiciously. Rather intimate, I say—well, very intimate, rather! would be a clear expression, if a trifle inelegant. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sensational in-door costumes would be to some of us. In order to establish herself in the estimation of the average Persian, as all that a woman ought to be, the European lady would have to conceal her face and cover her shapely, tight-fitting dress with an inelegant, loose mantle, whenever she ventured outside her own doors. With something of a penchant for undertaking things never before accomplished, I proposed one morning to take a walk around the ramparts that encompass the Persian capital. The question arose ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... her cool comment stung her mother to fury. The poor lady pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word for the very inelegant exhibition),— ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... bartender of the Oasis and catered to the excessive and uncritical thirsts of the ruck of range society, and he had objected vigorously to the placing of the second sign in his place of business; but at the close of an incisive if inelegant reply from the marshal, the sign went up, and stayed up. Edwards' language and delivery were as ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... delicately drawn-Taddeo's, hard and rude: and all the folds of Memmi's drapery cast with unbroken grace and complete gradations of shade, while Taddeo's are rigid and meagre; also in the heads, generally Taddeo's type of face is square in feature, with massive and inelegant clusters or volutes of hair and beard; but Memmi's delicate and long in feature, with much divided and flowing hair, often arranged with exquisite precision, as in the finest Greek coins. Examine successively in this respect only the heads of Adam, Abel, Methuselah, and Abraham, in ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... to choose, for delicacy best; What Order so contriv'd, as not to mix Tastes not well join'd, inelegant, but bring Taste after Taste, upheld by ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... were jolly, but uncultivated men, given to rudeness and profanity of speech when out of our immediate presence, and by themselves, and we heard from them, while they were splashing and struggling in the water, expressions somewhat inelegant ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... not grow up elegant, to fit the name. The name grew inelegant to fit her. During her earliest years the witty little children called her Elephant until they tired of the ingenuity and allowed her to lapse indolently from Ellar ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... exclaimed. "This is but a religious rite that Mercury got out of the cradle at two days to establish. Only he took Apollo's cattle while we are contenting ourselves with the sheep of mortal ownership. Robbery! What an inelegant word!" ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... one must learn to walk"—and the joys of the dinner-party are not to be partaken of without a long preliminary course of training, as many a young man has learned to his sorrow when he discovered that his inelegant use of knife and fork was causing humorous comment up and down the "board" and was drawing upon himself the haughty glances of an outraged hostess. The first requisite of success in dining out is the possession of a complete set of correct table manners—and these, like anything ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... colleges, but is now reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the professors of the two others. The chapel of the alienated college is yet standing, a fabrick not inelegant of external structure; but I was always, by some civil excuse, hindred from entering it. A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been made to convert it into a kind of green-house, by planting its area with shrubs. This new method of gardening is ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... respectability, he could perceive no symptoms of regret that their sentiments so little corresponded, nor could his avowed opinions awaken in her any exertion to render herself more acceptable to him. When he had taken sufficient time to study her character, he decided that the inelegant mirth, and ungoverned vanity of Amaranthe were preferable to the dawdling insipidity of Claribel. After this decision Lionel ceased to be ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... say, Captain Guy swore a good deal, and became perfectly unheroic and inelegant and unromantic. But his oaths had more effect upon his unruly followers than his protests, and they sat looking at him in a half-sullen, half-shamefaced manner, and would have probably succumbed to his influence had not attention been diverted and aroused by the reappearance ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the spectator. Subdued by his melancholy errand and discouraged by a long and vain search, my friend, whose imagination was quite as excitable as his taste was correct, soon wove a romance around the picture. It was evidently not the work of a novice; it was as much out of place in this obscure and inelegant domicil, as a diamond set in filigree, or a rose among pigweed. How came it there? who was the original? what her history and her fate? Her parentage and her nurture must have been refined; she must have inspired love in the chivalric; perchance this was the last relic of an illustrious exile, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... had received the blunders of Sir Martin Mar-all with such unbounded applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito. Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a fit of the cholic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the piece. This inelegant jeu de theatre is severely ridiculed ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... introduced him to our readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the door of an old-fashioned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down from it to the sill of the sunk doorway. An ostler ran out to take the horse, and helped the boy down tenderly and carefully. Sherbrooke himself then dismounted, looked at his beast from head to foot, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... legitimate cause to resent the licentious attack upon certain court ladies, especially his friend Mrs. Howard, in a scandalous fiction of which Eliza Haywood was the reputed author. Besides she had allied herself with Bond, Defoe, and other inelegant pretenders in the domain of letters, and was known to be the friend of Aaron Hill, Esq., who stood not high in Pope Alexander's good graces. And finally Pope may have honestly believed that she was responsible for a lampoon upon him in ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... his address from Bedford Square to South Kensington, and has been educated at a Public School and at a University. Young, tall and fair-haired, there is nothing to suggest that he will ever have that inelegant paunch which prevented the father, even in his loftiest moments of moral indignation, from being dignified. Of course he is a soldier, for the army is still the only profession for a gentleman, and England's hero is that above all things. His morals ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Louise 500,000 francs for her toilet, but she never spent the entire amount. She had little taste in dress, and would have made a very inelegant appearance had she not been well advised. The Emperor was present at her toilet those days on which he wished her to appear especially well, and himself tried the effect of different ornaments on the head, neck, and arms of the Empress, always ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... friend, a very fine plan! By the way, let us hope this Graevenitz girl talks a little better French than does her sister-in-law. I verily believe Madame Friedrich de Graevenitz prefers peasant German to our own speech, and at court no word of that inelegant language could ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but inelegant apparel of Dan—Dan the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... colleges, now dragging out a sickly existence, too poor to live, too good to die, might have become vigorous branches in the tree of knowledge. What have we in return for the outlay? A series of structures concerning which the most ardent friend of the system cannot but admit that they are inelegant, uninspiring and unpractical. Some of the newer dormitories at Harvard and Yale, it is true, are decided improvements. They are well built and supplied with many conveniences that will serve to make student life less heathenish. But they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Papers, and in Printshops, that are the reasons why I cannot more fully enjoy, the Amusements so various and pleasing of London. How often have I wished that I possessed as little Personal Beauty as you do; that my figure were as inelegant; my face as unlovely; and my appearance as unpleasing as yours! But ah! what little chance is there of so desirable an Event; I have had the small-pox, and must therefore submit to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... related to a colostomy bag] An extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also /v./ phrase, 'to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... turned on, wheezed and whined through the radiator: the air was blue and dense with tobacco smoke; the three sergeants reposed in restful, if inelegant attitudes, and Whitehall, his feet on the window sill and his wooden chair tilted back, was holding forth between puffs at a very battered pipe about an old colored woman who kept a little saloon ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... "Stung!" was Julia's inelegant comment. "This is what comes of being a twin. I think I'd better hurry and gobble up the small trunk space that is left me; otherwise I may have to carry a large part of my wardrobe home in a bundle." Dread of such a contingency sent her fleeing up the stairs in hot pursuit ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... said with a little inelegant sniff; she looked at her friend. "Are you going?" she ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... Jorian DeWitt with having misconducted himself. The moment Lika had gone upstairs for two or three hours' sleep, he said to me: 'Richie, you and I have no time for that. We must have a man at Falmouth's house by eight o'clock. If the scrubbing-maid on all fours-not an inelegant position, I have remarked—declares him dead, we are at Bartlett's (money-lender) by ten: and in Chippenden borough before two post meridian. As I am a tactician, there is mischief! but I will turn it to my uses, as I did our poor Jorian to-night; he smuggled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... example of affronted that, which may serve as a caution. The tutor said, in speaking of the word that, that that that that that lady parsed, was not the that that that gentleman requested her to analyze. This sentence, though rendered inelegant by a bad choice of words, is strictly grammatical. The first that is a noun; the second, a conjunction; the third, an adjective pronoun; the fourth, a noun; the fifth, a relative pronoun; the sixth, an adjective pronoun; the seventh, a noun; the eighth, a relative pronoun; the ninth, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Koontie Mamadie's account, eleven thousand inhabitants. It has no public buildings, except the mosques, two of which, though built of mud, are by no means inelegant. The market place is a large square, and the different articles of merchandize are exposed for sale on stalls covered with mats, to shade them from the sun. The market is crowded with people from ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... structure, of which the chief object was the large figure of S. Mary, often mentioned in the Rolls of the Custos Capellae, and which must have occupied a canopied niche, blocking up the whole of the middle light from sill to transom."[10] The design of the east window is inelegant, the transom is heavy, and the tracery in the large circle at the top spoils the effect of the window ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... the Unfortunate Lady," writes Campbell to his friend, "I read with sweet pleasure; for there is a joy in grief, when peace dwelleth in the breast of the sad.... Morose as I am in judging of poetry, I could find nothing inelegant in the whole piece. I hope you will in your next (since you are such a master of the plaintive) send me some verses consolatory to a hermit; for my sequestered situation sometimes stamps a firm belief on my mind that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... had provided was already filled by guests previously asked. The result was what might be expected, and it was often simply bare good fortune if everybody had enough to eat. But, "though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants awkward and too few," the talk was always pleasant, and no invitations to dine were more eagerly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... unsentimental way the problem of the unemployed had been most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the public ways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than the Labour Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eye throughout the whole world. It was the constant theme of the phonographic newspapers how much the world had progressed since nineteenth-century days, when the bodies of those killed by the vehicular traffic or dead of starvation, were, they alleged, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... suggestion for the reform of this article of costume is entitled to the utmost respect. Already Englishmen, when they throw off the trammels of ceremony, and wish to be at their ease, substitute for the stiff, uncomfortable, and inelegant hat, such other article as the taste and enterprise of the hat and cap manufacturers have provided; and in France and Germany the hat has, for the last six or seven years, been gradually altering its form and substance, until it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... its music with it back and forward,—why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... procedure. Many restorations were made; and, as these swelled the lists beyond the number then authorized by law, there was established a reduced pay for those whose recent promotion made them in excess. For them was adopted, in naval colloquialism, the inelegant but suggestive term "jackass" lieutenants. It should be explained to the outsider, perhaps even many professional readers now may not know, that the word was formerly used for a class of so-called frigates which intervened between the frigate-class proper ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... founded them, had accustomed themselves to sleep on straw mattresses, with pillows of the same material, to wear none but low shoes; to make their simple dress without plaits, and as scant as convenience for working would allow; not to be ashamed of patches, no matter how numerous or inelegant; to eat only broken bread; in short to live in every respect like the poorest classes of society. These, and innumerable other practices of mortification, were constantly observed by the greater part of the community from the beginning. But in a severe ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Angel-guest, as he Beholding shall confess, that here on Earth God hath dispensed his bounties as in Heaven. So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order, so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change; Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields In India East or West, or middle shore In Pontus ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 'good for sore eyes,' as you sometimes say;" and with this inelegant remark Miss Alfaretta walked away while laughing, happy Jim sped downwards to the vine-wreathed lodge at the great entrance gate. He had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he stepped into the freshly furbished upper chamber ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... to me generally very ugly. The very few exceptions are bad copies of us. Heaven knows what evil genius has inspired their costume; it is amazingly inelegant compared with those of former generations. It has no distinction, no beauty of color or romance; it appeals neither to the senses, nor the mind, nor the eye, and it must be very uncomfortable. It is meagre and stunted. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, "in the style and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or title, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... 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[obs3]; lumbering; hulky[obs3], hulking; unwieldy. squalid, haggard; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of her more than once. People smiled, not unkindly, when they mentioned Mrs. Errol, a good sort, they said; but, like many another woman of inelegant exterior, how good a sort only her Maker knew. She was large in every way. It was the only word that described her; large-boned, large-featured, and so stout that she wheezed—a fact which in no way limited her activity. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... morning dip. It was most absurd to see entire families, from the bald-headed and spectacled grandfather to the baby who could scarcely walk, all disporting themselves in the water together, many of them supported by the very inelegant-looking bladders I have mentioned. There was a little delay in mounting our horses, under the shade of the fig-trees; but when we were once off, a party of eleven, the cavalcade became quite formidable. As we clattered up the paved streets, between ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in poetry. It may appear that, while grasping at originality of description and sentiment, and striving to attain propriety of expression, I have only been depicting common images, and embodying obvious thoughts, and this, too, in inelegant language. Yet even in this case, though disappointed, I shall not be without my sources of comfort. The pleasure which I enjoy in composing verses is quite independent of other men's opinions of them; and I expect to feel as happy as ever in this amusement, even though assured that others could ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... had come to her at the first possible moment to protest against "this Tom Reynolds." "He has had a bad recitation," she thought, "and now he is going to take it out on me," and then she called her brother a hard and inelegant name, as people will when angry with their dearest relatives. Had Nancy been of a satirical nature she might have made something of her brother's adoption of Freudian methods; but she was not, and she knew only ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... attending, as she ought to have done, to his description of Amtsvorstehers, was thinking of other things. Dellwig had thick lips that could not be hidden entirely by his grizzled moustache and beard, and he had the sort of eyes known to the inelegant but truthful as fishy, and a big obstinate nose, and a narrow obstinate forehead, and a long body and short legs; and though all this, Anna told herself, was not in the least his fault and should not in any way prejudice ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... objection most urged is that which relates to style. It is said, the expression will be poor, inelegant, inaccurate, and offensive ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... briskly in the direction of the "big house." Scarlet-coated horsemen, and high-born maids and matrons, with all the medley of the Hunt in their train, cantered along the winding road—a mirthful, laughter-loving company. There were the General, stout and inelegant, wont to take his fences carefully, who changed his weight-carrying mount thrice during the day, and liked a gateway better than a thorny hedge, and for the last fifteen years had never been in at the death; and his wife, the leader of fashion, but not yet the leader of the Hunt; ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... helping to manage progress and lead change that I didn't always show the joy that was in my heart But the biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the Cold War. And there's another to be singled out, though it may seem inelegant. I mean a mass of people called the American taxpayer. No ever thinks to thank the people who pay country's bill or an alliance's bill. But for a half Century now, the American people have shouldered the burden and paid taxes that were higher than ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the most ludicrous and accurate imitations of it every time she opens her mouth. Of course I shall not allow this, comical as it is, to become a habit. This is the way the southern ladies acquire the thick and inelegant pronunciation which distinguishes their utterances from the northern snuffle; and I have no desire that S—— should adorn her mother tongue with either peculiarity. It is a curious and sad enough thing to observe, as I have frequent opportunities ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... well-drawn character; so well, so naturally painted, that he hardly deserves to be the hero of a farce. Although exceedingly soft, he is a well-bred fool—though somewhat fat (for the actor is Mr. David Rees); he is not altogether inelegant. The gentleman who does the theatrical metaphysics in the Morning Herald has described him as a capital specimen of "physical obesity and moral teunity,"[3]—which we quote to save ourselves trouble, for the force of description can no further go. Prudence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... something very romantic in the style of its architecture, and by no means inelegant; perhaps it is better suited for the peculiar situation of this marine palace than a more classical or accredited order would be. It has been likened, on its first appearance, to a chess-board; but, in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... clean; the dishes, which contained quite cold vegetables, were cracked and did not match; the bread was of the commonest kind, that which is called "household;" the knives were badly cleaned, and the plate was worn off the forks and spoons. It was considered inelegant to have gas in the dining-room, therefore a cheap paraffin-lamp was in the centre of the table, and was more liberal of scent than light. The curtains to the window were of that annoying red which shrieks down any other colour near ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The word "brass" was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like another word I have in mind—a ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... than the 'Village Minstrel,' issued twice! the 'Shepherd's Calendar' was entirely overlooked by the public and the press. And it could not well be otherwise. The book, instead of in morocco, was bound, or rather stitched, in coarse blue cardboard; the paper was not only not 'toned,' but rough and inelegant in the extreme; and the edges, which, ought to have been smooth and gilded, were rugged and uneven like a ploughed field. It was hopeless to expect that a most discerning public should pay six shillings for a book of pastorals of such clownish appearance, when the sweetest ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Mark; on board that very ship she had been married; and now it formed her home, temporarily, if not permanently. Bridget had been living so long beneath a tent, and in savage huts, that the accommodations of the Rancocus appeared like those of a palace. They were not inelegant even, though it was not usual, in that period of the republic, to fit up vessels with a magnificence little short of royal yachts, as is done at present. In the way of convenience, however, our ship could boast of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... prose; and, indeed, his great secret in the Schoolmaster (the perpetual translation and retranslation of English into the learned languages, and especially Latin) is exactly what would form such a style. It is, as the following examples from both works will show, clear, not inelegant, invaluable as a kind of go-cart to habituate the infant limbs of prose English to orderly movement; but it is not original, or striking, or characteristic, or calculated to show the native powers and capacities of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and not many kinds are found. There is no silver, zinc, or platinum; but only gold, copper, tin, lead, and iron. Gold is found in beads, ear-rings, and other ornaments, which are in some instances of a fashion that is not inelegant. [PLATE XVI., Fig. 3.] Copper occurs pure, but is more often hardened by means of an alloy of tin, whereby it becomes bronze, and is rendered suitable for implements and weapons. Lead is rare, occurring only in a very few specimens, as in one jar or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... that he is disregarding their legitimate claims—that he is doing what in the nature of things must produce unhappiness; and he will alter his course. But until you do this—until you demonstrate that his proceedings are essentially inconvenient or inelegant, essentially irrational, unjust, or ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the Frenchman's abilities, because he mistook the meaning of the words Vagabond and Rambler; he would recollect, that in old English and modern French authors, vagabond means wanderer: des eaux vagabondes is a phrase far from inelegant. But independently of this consideration, no well-bred gentleman would put a foreigner out of countenance by openly laughing at such a mistake: he would imitate the politeness of the Frenchman, who, when Dr. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and irritation were apparent in the inelegant jocosity of my manner. At any rate, Stephen Strong, who was a shrewd ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... clothes that are PUT ON and the clothes that are WRAPPED AROUND. The former style, with its jackets, trousers, and leggings, is not absolutely unknown to the Athenians,—their old enemies, the Persians, wear these[*]; but such clumsy, inelegant garments are despised and ridiculed as fit only for the "Barbarians" who use them. They are not merely absurdly homely; they cannot even be thrown off promptly in an emergency, leaving the glorious human form free to put forth any noble effort. The Athenians wear the wrapped style of ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Minstrels are in rehearsal, and the Theatrical Committee are looking up amateurs for a farce. Readings from Dickens are also spoken of. An occasional whale is seen blowing in the distance, and many grampuses come rolling about the ship,—most inelegant brutes, some three or four times the size of a porpoise. Each in turn comes up, throws himself round on the top of the sea, exposing nearly half his body, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Jerry's relieved, inelegant comment to Susan Atwell, as she moved to the right. Susan stifled an irrepressible chuckle and sobered her face for what ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... shoulders broad, the bleeding prey. Part on their altars smokes a sacrifice To that all-gracious Power, whose bounteous hand Supports his wide creation; what remains On living coals they broil, inelegant Of taste, nor skilled as yet in nicer arts 60 Of pampered luxury. Devotion pure, And strong necessity, thus first began The chase of beasts: though bloody was the deed, Yet without guilt. For the green herb alone Unequal to sustain man's labouring race, Now every moving thing ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of Celsus, as they are represented and refuted by Origen, (l. v. p. 247—259,) we may clearly discover the distinction that was made between the Jewish people and the Christian sect. See, in the Dialogue of Minucius Felix, (c. 5, 6,) a fair and not inelegant description of the popular sentiments, with regard to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... thief, an adulterer or a cut-throat, or in any shape an infamous fellow, branded him with great freedom. Upon these [models] Lucilius entirely depends, having imitated them, changing only their feet and numbers: a man of wit, of great keenness, inelegant in the composition of verse: for in this respect he was faulty; he would often, as a great feat, dictate two hundred verses in an hour, standing in the same position. As he flowed muddily, there ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... thoughts. He walked along the fat and fertile Kentish fields, by the neat iron railing with which they were enclosed. All about him was visible the care of man. Nothing was left wild. The trees were lopped into proper shape, cut down where their presence seemed inelegant, planted to complete the symmetry of a group. Nature herself was under the power of the formal influence, and flourished with a certain rigidity and decorum. After a while the impression became singularly irksome; it seemed to emphasise man's lack of freedom, reminding ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... toothpick out of a match, decided that toothpicks were inelegant in his tragic mood, and longed: "Never did see her among her own kind of folks till now. I wish I could jabber about music and stuff. I'll learn it. I will! I can! I picked up autos in three months. I—— Milt, you're a dub. I wonder can they be talking ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... sight, I admit," went on Jennie. "Everything in the shell, girls? Now! up with it. Come on, little Trix," she added to the coxswain. "Don't get your tiller-lines snarled, and bring your 'nose-warmer'"—by which inelegant term she referred to the megaphone which, when they were really trying for speed was strapped to ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... of the same word, is a disagreeable and inelegant fault in writing, as: "If John will come home, we will all come, but if he fails to come, we will not come until ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... cathedral and many elegant private houses. The city is, in general, tolerably well built; but many of the streets have domes, or arcades of wood, which are frequently fifty or sixty feet in height, and which have an inelegant appearance, but are useful in the winter, and under some of them are rows of shops, Containing every article of luxury or utility, in equal perfection with those that are to be met with in ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... passed his days in discreditable industry. Each moment a fresh point of degradation met his benumbed vision. His profuse and ornamental locks were reduced to a single roughly-plaited coil; his sandals were inelegant and harsh; in place of his many-coloured flowing robes a scanty blue gown clothed his form. He who had been a god was undistinguishable from the labourers of the fields. Only in one thing did the resemblance fail: about his neck he found a weighty block of wood controlled by an iron ring: while ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the locality. The five-bedded room off the front landing was occupied by the stiffest and best behaved of the first division, and might be ranked with Grosvenor Square or Lancaster Gate. There were rooms on the second floor where girls of the second and third division herded in inelegant obscurity, the Bloomsbury and Camden Town of the mansion. On this story, too, slept the rabble of girls under twelve—creatures utterly despicable in the minds of girls in their teens, and the rooms they inhabited ranked as low ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... "Nix," was the inelegant reply, "I know you can, for I saw you handle that bay outlaw they ran in on you this morning: seven years old and no wrangler in Pima could ride him. Old Cap Pike said it was a damn shame to put you up against that sun-fisher as an ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... became enlightened; a more familiar acquaintance disclosed their genuine properties, and the purposes to which they might be applied at home;—Raleigh introduced the potatoe on his Irish estates;—an acceptable however inelegant luxury was discovered in the use of tobacco; and somewhat later, the introduction of tea gradually brought sobriety and refinement into the system of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... its languishing eyes, and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has painted her, and her history is a disgrace to her age ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... frogs," to which the dean so rancorously alluded, had, indeed, caused some consternation to the fellows of——. There had been a marvellous story going the round of the papers, of a shower of the inelegant reptiles in question having fallen in some part of the kingdom. Old women were muttering prophecies, and wise men acknowledged themselves puzzled. The Ashmolean Society had sat in conclave upon it, and accounted so satisfactorily for the occurrence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the old black letter books; they were rich in matter, though their style was inelegant; wonderfully so, considering how conversant the writers were with the best ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... preternaturally large eyes, more nearly resembling advertisements for a hair dye or complexion bleach than ecclesiastical subjects. Around the main altar stood armoured soldiers of Biblical antiquity, squat, inelegant figures that had first been painted on canvas and were afterward cut out like gigantic paper dolls, being put into wooden grooves to ensure ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... gorillas give when enraged, or from the one you can hear them giving when they are what the natives call "dancing" at night. I noticed that their reach of arm was immense, and that when they went from one tree to another, they squattered across the open ground in a most inelegant style, dragging their long arms with the knuckles downwards. I should think the big male and female were over six feet each. The others would be from four to five. I put out my hand and laid it on Wiki's gun to prevent him from firing, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of a place-name is correct which makes bad grammar of the original. The apparatus of Indian synthesis was cumbersome and perhaps inelegant, but it was nicely adjusted to its work. The grammatical relations of words were never lost sight of. The several components of a name had their established order, not dependent upon the will or skill of the composer. When we read modern advertisements of "cheap gentlemen's traveling ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... cultivate with their own hands a greater or less extent of ground. They are naturally gay, and fond of all kinds of diversion. They have likewise a strong taste for music, and even compose verses, which, though rude and inelegant, possess much pleasing native simplicity, often more interesting than the laboured compositions of cultivated poets. Extemporary rhymers are common among them, like the improvisatori of Italy, and are called Palladores, who are held in great estimation, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... repeated the inelegant remark many times. All this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... was the addition of a square vestibule in front of the tomb, and here, on prescribed days, the memorial ceremonies took place. The statues of the double were rude and clumsy, the coffins heavy and massive, and the figures with which they were decorated inelegant and out of proportion, while the stelae are very rudely cut. From the time of the VIth dynasty the lords of the Said had been reduced to employing workmen from Memphis to adorn their monuments; but the rivalry between the Thebans ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the possibility ... that the.—It will probably seem to a modern reader that either 'that' or 'the' has crept in improperly. It might be so; but Burke still maintained the authoritative but rather inelegant tradition by which 'that,' like the French que, could replace any such antecedent word as 'when,' ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... they toke occasion to note suche myslyuinge. And so in playne wordes they repreued without fauour the vyces of the sayd yl disposyd peple of what condicion or order they were: Of this auncient wrytinge of Comedyes our laten Poetes deuysed a maner of wrytinge nat inelegant. And fyrst Lucilius composed one Satyre in the whiche he wrote by name the vices of certayne princes and Citezyns of Rome And that with many bourdes so y^t with his mery speche myxt with rebukes he correct al them of the cyte that ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... Fanny sniffed, if that very inelegant word may be applied to any action performed by so elegant a ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... some inexplicable reason spelling has become mixed up with moral feeling. One cannot pretend to explain things in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so. Spelling is not appropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right or wrong. We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when the vogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theological eccentricity; but we esteem him "Nithing" and an outcast if he but drop a "p" from opportunity. It is not ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... game or poultry do not touch the bones with your fingers. To take a bone in the fingers for the purpose of picking it, is looked upon as being very inelegant. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... nearly all warm supporters of the General. The Stokes family, of North Carolina, were there, particular friends of his; the Blackburns, and many other old families, whose names have escaped my memory. I well recollect to what disadvantage Mrs. Jackson appeared, with her dowdyfied figure, her inelegant conversation, and her total want of refinement, in the midst of this bevy of highly-cultivated, aristocratic women; and I recall very distinctly how the ladies of the Jackson party hovered near her at all times, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... valley stood 65 a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colours, some horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, 70 untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of them dancing, in and out, in unintelligible figures, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
