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Haltingly   /hˈɔltɪŋli/   Listen
Haltingly

adverb
1.
In a halting manner.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Haltingly" Quotes from Famous Books



... Three Fountains, and when we had well bought would show us the city of the long, long dead of which they were custodians. They were both obliging enough to speak English, Brother Demetrius imperfectly and haltingly, and without the assistance of those four front teeth which are so especially necessary to a foreign tongue, Brother Eusebius fluently, and with such richness of dialect that we were not at all surprised to learn ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... deep abyss of darkness in which she seemed to have wandered ceaselessly and comfortlessly for many days, Muriel Roscoe came haltingly back to the surface of things. She was very weak, so weak that to open her eyes was an exertion requiring all her resolution, and to keep them open during those first hours of returning life a physical ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... that Father Roget is the older man." He spoke haltingly, and a flush dyed his smooth, clean-shaven face from brow to chin. "Will you not ask him?" Then his ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... valley from the south by sinuously following the windings of a rushing, foam-white stream, and for many miles the engines cautiously feel their way among stupendous walls, passing haltingly over bridges hung perilously between perpendicular cliffs by slender iron rods, or creep like mountain-cats from ledge to ledge, so that when they have reached safe harbor beside the little red depot they never fail to pant ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... to the window," she replied. "I listened. I heard all." She spoke haltingly, through dry lips. Her face was as white as her ruff, but a strange light burned in her eyes, and there was no trembling. "This morning you said that all that you had—your name and your sword—were at my service. You may take them both again, sir. I refuse the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... to enthuse; but the words came haltingly. She suggested to Joan a candle that some wind had suddenly blown out. The paint and powder had been obvious, but at least it had given her the mask of youth. She looked old and withered. The life seemed to ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... in the comfort and almost the luxury of the old extravagant days. Yet, he remained to Elmville as only "Billy" Pemberton, the son of our distinguished and honoured fellow-townsman, "ex-Governor Pemberton." Thus was he introduced at public gatherings where he sometimes spoke, haltingly and prosily, for his talents were too serious and deep for extempore brilliancy; thus was he presented to strangers and to the lawyers who made the circuit of the courts; and so the Daily Banner referred to him in print. To be "the son of" was his doom. What ever he should accomplish ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... termed, The other halfe stone, I cannot resolue with my selfe, and you much lesse. Howbeit, I haltingly ayme, it may proceede from one of these respects; either, because it is the halfe of a monument, whose other part resteth elsewhere: or, for that it meaneth, after the Dutch phrase and their owne measure, a stone and halfe. For, in Dutch, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... sorry," returned she haltingly, somehow checked in her warm rush of thought. "Stanton?... Did he ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... sauntered out to the street, Merle meekly in the rear, the master mind still coerced by brute wealth. They paused before other shop windows, cheeks hollowed above the savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to—necklaces and rings ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... she entered, and if he was not as pale as she was, it was because his tan dissembled it. For a moment there was silence between them, as they stood looking each at the other. Then she moved forward, and began at last to speak, haltingly, in an unsteady voice, amazing in one usually ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... "But," she objected, "he was only—he said. Oh! I was afraid I'd lose him." The lawyer moved closer to her, his unwinking, grey-green eyes like slate. "He said he'd kill you," he reiterated; "remember that, if you don't want to hang. He struck you; where?" After a long pause she replied haltingly, "In the back." Al Schimpf nodded, "Good. And he said you both were to get away with a mint. He told you it would be easy; the old man would gladly buy silence; and, by ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... side of the street. He was a big, hulking Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing knowledge of the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... pass as George had said. One cold, rainy day when the wind rustled the fallen leaves and sighed through all the bare branches, he came haltingly up to the end of his lonely pilgrimage. It was given to little John Jay to hold his hand and look into his eyes as Death swung up the bar and bade ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston

... talk was altogether above his head. The lama, haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery, the Such-zen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march away. The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... room had had some of the grime of months swept out of them. When Ella Volsky came suddenly into the flat, with lips compressed, and a high colour, Rose-Marie had been glowingly conscious of her start of surprise. And when she had said, haltingly, in reference to the hair—"I'll dry it for you, Miss Rose-Marie!" Rose-Marie could have wept with happiness. It was the first time that she had ever heard Ella offer to do anything ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... stand before her mother. And again her attitude was not that of one woman talking to another, but that of a child, anxious to excuse a fault. "Well,—well," she began haltingly, "someone ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... long months the ex-officer had sought employment, indoor or outdoor, congenial or uncongenial. The quest was vain. Once he had broached the matter haltingly to an influential acquaintance. The latter's reception of his distress had been so startlingly obnoxious that he would have died rather than repeat the venture. Then Smith of Dale's, Old Bond Street—Smith, who had cut his hair since he was a boy, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... him closely for a while in silence, finding peace and great comfort in his hold. Then at length, haltingly she spoke. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... most, I think,' said Lawford haltingly, 'was this.' He pointed with his stick to ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... say we meant the same thing?" she said. I had my warning; but, though haltingly, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... Jorge Manrique? That's one reason, Tel," the other man continued slowly. With one hand he gestured to the waiter for more beer, the other he waved across his face as if to brush away the music; then he recited, pronouncing the words haltingly: ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... and Billy's scalp blushed as he haltingly remarked, "Well, I suppose you're right." Then after a long pause—"Maxwelton's braes, um, um, um." Another long pause ensued, during which Billy knocked the ashes from his pipe against the wall of the fireplace, poked the back-log, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... reader. But concrete illustrations of the value which scientific research may add to our environment are not far to seek. They are afforded in abundance by the dramatic achievements of the past century of human progress, in which science has begun painfully and haltingly to creep into its true place ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... shoved him out into the aisle, where he stood trembling and uncertain, while she assisted her mistress to her feet and led her haltingly toward the exit. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... sweetly within him, were not to run incontinently dry, the conversation, he felt, must be steadied down to themes of other import. So he civilly but definitely requested Sir Abel to "come to Hecuba," and to Hecuba the poor man, haltingly yet very obediently, came. He and his ex-head-clerk seemed, indeed, to have changed places, so that, before the end of the interview, Iglesias began to measure himself as never before, to realise his own business acumen, his quickness of apprehension, his grasp of the issues presented ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... to the old man, and supporting him at the same time put the old man's arms about his neck, and by a great effort got the poor creature on his back. Carrying him thus, he began to go haltingly up the side of the gully. The ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... been sullen silence after that, the admirals misliking the furrow drawn above Themistocles's eyes. Then Eurybiades had haltingly ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... huge door swung outward and a grinning apparition appeared in the doorway, carrying a vessel of water and a loaf of bread. It was an old, old negro, and he shuffled forward haltingly. Just outside the door could be seen ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes

... accustomed to the high-flown compliments of polite society, but she could not doubt the sincerity of this man, who had no place in a world where idle flattery was the small coin of talk. She blushed slightly and changed the subject, and as he talked, less and less haltingly, of the traditions of Nevis, she watched his eyes, fascinated. They were not the eyes of mere youth, any more than of a man who had seen far too much of life. Neither, upon closer inspection, were they the eyes of a saint or a martyr, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... office of the Attorney-General, and that for this reason it would be well, nay, it was imperatively demanded, that the legislative power should be kept ready to interpose with fresh enactments, the very moment those already in force should be dulled by adverse construction, or haltingly administered by Executive agents not in sympathy ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... haltingly when they had reached a sandy, ant-infested path that ran slantingly up among the trees. He affected a certain perplexity. He said he did not understand what it was his wife was "after," what she "thought she was doing" in "making all this trouble"; he wanted ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... in haste, yet haltingly; were all but inaudible whispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being cut adrift and thrown on ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... seemed confused and in trouble, I sent the children out to bring him to me. He came up haltingly, and in response to my questioning told me that he had been rejected by the hospital because he had been a Confederate soldier and it was against their rules to accept any ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... held this dingy little book, honest Puritan eyes studied its ill-expressed words, and sweet Puritan lips sang haltingly but lovingly from its pages. This was "Cicely Morse Her Book" in the year 1710, and bears on many a page her name ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... off as old Dorn came haltingly, as if stunned, toward Kurt. But Kurt did not want to face his father at that moment. He needed to fight to keep up ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... sound of footsteps in the corridor. The soldiers had recovered their courage, and fearful of the anger of their dreaded Boolooroo, whom the Princesses declared would punish them severely, had ventured to return to the room. They came rather haltingly, though, and the Captain of the Guards first put his head cautiously through the doorway to see if the coast was clear. The goat discovered him and tried to make a rush, but the rope held the animal back, and when the Captain saw this, he came ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... said haltingly, "have I ever—been intro—" Suddenly his eyes closed, a frown gathered on his forehead. After a minute his eyes opened again, and he gazed with painful, pathetic seriousness at Jo. This grew to a kind of childish terror; then slowly, as a shadow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the importance of the New York verdict. "Hazel Kirke," which became one of the historic successes of the American stage, tottered along haltingly for weeks in Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore. In the Quaker City, "Barbara Fritchie," with Julia Marlowe in the title role, came dangerously near closing because of discouraging business. Yet she came to New ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... No! No such good luck for me." His laugh had an unexpected tone of bitterness in it. She gave him a searching glance in the dusk, and presently began again haltingly. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny this assertion—but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... glance—but straightway reddened to his very ears. This I could not understand, but stood gazing at him in astonishment. Presently, he straightened himself a little, approached me with a sort of confused expression, and haltingly said something—probably it was an apology for not having before perceived that I was now a grown-up young person. But the next moment I understood. What I did I hardly know, save that, in my dismay and confusion, I blushed even more ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... autumn sky, Haltingly, the lines go by. Ah, would steps were blithe and gay, As when first they marched away, Smile on lip and curl on brow,— Only white-faced gray-beards now, Standing on life's outer verge, E'en the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... She spoke haltingly, but Pearl knew what was in her heart, and her quick imagination painted in the details of each picture. She could see the homesick Scotch girl, in the far Northern post, hungry for admiration and love, and trying to make herself as comely as she could. She could sense ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... set her foot upon the step and drew herself up beside Jarvis. She did not look toward the freight agent. Just as the horses began to swing about, the man upon the platform said, haltingly: ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... stop your jokes; he has a seat and a voice in the committee!..."—"Silentium! Silentium!" calls the chorus of little heralds. And Kothner: "Begin!" Beckmesser, after bowing to the queen of the day and to the assembly, gives forth, haltingly, Walther's song as he remembers it, as it has become with passing through the medium of his mind. What he utters, with many an anxious peep at the crumpled manuscript, is nonsense of the most ludicrous. For every word he substitutes ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine English ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... at Berlin, Malmesbury found signs that Frederick William was ashamed at the ignominious issue of the campaign, and professed a desire to take up the duties which the Duke of Brunswick had so haltingly fulfilled. The King seemed rather pleased than otherwise at the Austrian reverses in the north of Alsace, but by no means indisposed to renew the attack upon France, always provided that England paid him a sufficient subsidy. He assured the envoy that his chef-d'oeuvre, the Triple ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... multitude, "living" its religion as no people have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... Haltingly she explained the situation. He bore it stolidly till, in a rasping whisper, she concluded with the information forced from Ann. She told him of the low whistle in the moonlight at their daughter's window, of Dolly's cautious exit from the house, of the tender embrace ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... a little bundle for you—of—of things to eat." He took her by the arms, and looked into her quaint, wise face, "And I was so glad I had it, darling, for you are thinner than you were." He paused to bite his lip, and continued haltingly, "There was bread in that ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... It keyed well enough with his lately shown indifference, but the indifference keyed not at all with all that had gone before and still less with her very correct comprehension of Jack himself. She was quite positive as to the sincerity of those protestations which he had made so haltingly—so boyishly—and in such absolutely truthful accents. Why he had turned over a new—and bad—leaf so suddenly she did not at all know, but her woman's wit—backed up by the many good instincts which good women always get from Heaven knows ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... eyes filled with shy pleading. He could not, would not, for all of the solar system, have committed the unpardonable affront of rejecting the love so frankly offered. And yet he did not know how to accept this miracle. He did it clumsily, haltingly disclosing the secret recesses of his own heart and what had transpired there since the night he had taken the knife away ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... this moment, leading Geoff by the hand, and when the great car glided up to the door, she and the boy went out together to see the last of the departing guest. Stephen stepped haltingly into the car, and leaned over the side to wave his own farewells. Pixie smiled, and waved in reply, and the sun shone down on her uncovered face. Stephen would have been thankful if he could have carried away that picture ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... her recital slowly, without apparent object, but once into it she seemed unable to stop; and now, although her words came haltingly, it was plain that she had worked herself into a sort of hysteria in which she gave little heed to her hearer. It was characteristic of her that she could so excite herself by the power of visualization ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... her failing arms, she began a desperate prayer for help. Her words came haltingly. They sounded strange to herself. But with all the strength that remained she sent forth her cry to the Infinite. And even as she prayed there came to her—whence she knew not—the conviction that somewhere—probably not more than a couple of miles ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... brother Nikky," says the peasant as he tastes his morning glass of rakia. There is no brilliance but a profound knowledge of human nature in this humorous old Balkan gentleman. It is not by brilliant oratory that he sways the Skup[vs]tina, for he merely thinks aloud; slowly and haltingly, while he caresses his beautiful white beard, the words come out in a very bass voice—it is a grave and confidential talk, although a merry gleam occasionally dances in his eyes. With such homeliness does he talk that he pays ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... in her breath again, this time with a catch that was almost a sob. And then she began to talk—at first haltingly, with half-finished sentences; then hurriedly, with a rush of words that seemed not able to utter themselves fast enough to keep up with ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... faith as a grain of mustard seed," Andy spelled haltingly, and then glanced up, mystified. "Why, it air talkin' about ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... and dismembered trunk set up beside a doorway—a physician's manikin that chance or some sinister clown had left there. Once—and one of the strangest sounds I ever heard—behind the closed up-stair shutters of an apothecary's shop, whose powders and poisons were strewn over the sidewalk, a piano haltingly played with one finger. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... to his poisoned rice and Captain Kidd apologized to his victim, who was frowning reproof at him, and the rehearsal proceeded haltingly. ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... of her, he had conjured up just such a vision as this—they two walking the deserted deck alone, and she innocently giving him an opening for some low-voiced, tender speech, at which she would start, look at him quickly, and then ask him haltingly if the words had any particular application. And after that—oh, well, all sorts of things might happen. And now the moment had come. It was true that he had always pictured the scene as taking place by moonlight and at present there ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... he said, hastily and haltingly, "you won't take anything I've said... you know... —about Sarah... as bein' in any way disloyal to her? She's a good woman, an' faithful. An' her life ain't so easy by a long shot. I'd bite out my tongue before I'd say anything against her. I guess all folks have their troubles. It's hell ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... know," he said quickly; and then haltingly: "I've been—so beastly lonely, Avery. Make allowances for ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... "Because—because," she replied haltingly, "I had chosen the religious life, the which my guardian opposed. He appeared to think that some experience of the rigors of the convent might make me less eager to immure myself in a nunnery, which, like Pfalz Castle, is also ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... she entered. Every head was lifted and every pair of eyes looked curiously at the odd little figure in its quaintly scalloped dress and shining black braids. She hesitated, looked about her in desperation, saw no familiar face in all the crowd, and haltingly began ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown



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