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Swaggering   /swˈægərɪŋ/   Listen
Swaggering

adjective
1.
Having or showing arrogant superiority to and disdain of those one views as unworthy.  Synonyms: disdainful, haughty, imperious, lordly, overbearing, prideful, sniffy, supercilious.  "Haughty aristocrats" , "His lordly manners were offensive" , "Walked with a prideful swagger" , "Very sniffy about breaches of etiquette" , "His mother eyed my clothes with a supercilious air" , "A more swaggering mood than usual"
2.
Flamboyantly adventurous.  Synonym: swashbuckling.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Swaggering" Quotes from Famous Books



... self-importance. There was no one to whom he wasn't polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was afraid. "Hello, Mr. Masterman!" "Hello, Dr. Hilary!" "Hello, Father Ryan!" "Hello Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful familiarity, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... has been placed in my hands by some western clients of ours," he said by way of swaggering explanation, "of an embezzler who is hiding in New York. It required no great reasoning power to decide that the man's trail would sooner or later cross Wall Street. I believe it has done so—not directly, but indirectly. The trail, I think, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... Suburbs?" said he, giving the constable a look of blighting scorn; and, swaggering by like a mighty conqueror, joined Cleek at the compartment door. "Nailed it at the second rap, guv'ner," he said in an undertone. "Fell down on Gamage's, picked myself up on Loader, Tottenham Court Road; 14127 A, manufactured Stockholm. Valve tightened—old ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... long period while the outlaws were swaggering down Tombstone's streets, defying the leaders of the law-and-order movement, the two-gun man managed to cling to the good graces of the Earp faction; just as in these days you may have seen a crooked ward-heeler hanging to the skirts of a good-government crusade. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... intoxicating to Quin than all the more tangible ones he had ever received. It sent him swaggering through the next few months with his head in the air and his heart on fire. Nothing could stop him now, he told himself boastfully. Old Bangs was showing him signal favor, Madam Bartlett was his staunch friend, Mr. Ranny and the aunties were his allies, and even if Miss Nell didn't care ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... sight to see little Vicky swaggering out to meet his enemy, while the townsfolk flocked to the walls to witness the fight. Never was such a valiant weaver till the elephant, descrying its tiny antagonist, trumpeted fiercely, and charged right at him, and then, alas! all the little man's courage disappeared, and forgetting ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... character, in the high sense of the word, but of manners or humors. His design was to lash the follies and vices of the day, and his dramatis persona consisted for the most part of gulls, impostors, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts, and "Pauls men." In his first play, Every Man in his Humor (acted in 1598), in Every Man Out of his Humor, Bartholomew Fair, and indeed, in all of his comedies, his subject was the "spongy humors of the time," that is, the fashionable affectations, the whims, oddities, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... satisfaction of being able to say to the family that had pinched and denied itself to pay for his schooling, "Here I am, good people, nineteen years old and able to shift for myself;" with another, the fun of swaggering in full uniform, with clanking heels and rattling sword, into the quiet house where the old uncle who had been so generous sat waiting to welcome him home; with a third, the joy of mounting a familiar staircase, brevet in pocket, and knocking at a certain door, behind which a girlish ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... looking works of poetry and belles-lettres, and arranged for them to be sent to Dresden. During this visit I was very much interested in the life of the students. In addition to my impressions of the theatre and of Prague, now came those of the so-called swaggering undergraduate. A great change had taken place in this class. When, as a lad of eight, I had my first glimpse of students, their long hair, their old German costume with the black velvet skull-cap and the shirt collar turned back from the bare neck, had quite ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... see good minced-pie Here standing swaggering on the table; The lofty walls so large and high I'll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, And spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs To drive down bravely ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... docile nullities, in the military dictatorship of the civil proconsuls, in the supremacy conferred on Lechelle and Rossignol, in the subordination forced on Kleber and Marceau, in the absurd plans of a demagogue with huge epaulettes like Cartaux,[3322] in the grotesque orders of the day issued by a swaggering inebriate like Henriot,[3323] in the disgrace of Bonaparte, and in the detention of Hoche.—In the civil order of things, it was worse. Not only was the rule of regulating promotion by merit not recognized but it was applied ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... do further allege, that many of the said counterfeits, upon a strict examination, have been found in the very act of strutting, swearing, staring, swaggering, in a manner that plainly shewed their best endeavours to imitate us. Wherein, although they did not succeed, yet by their ignorant and ungainly way of copying our graces, the utmost indignity was endeavoured to be cast upon ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... we sailed for Port Royal, where we arrived safely with our prizes; and, as there was nothing to do on board, I went ashore, and having purchased a laced waistcoat, with some other clothes, at a sale, made a swaggering figure for some days among the taverns, where I ventured to play a little at hazard, and came off with fifty pistoles in my pocket. Meanwhile our captain was promoted to a ship of twenty guns, and the command of the Lizard given to a man turned of fourscore, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... objects honourable and worthy the attention of any man; but I was not engaged in it, my political as well as private pursuits forbidding me from taking a part until it was over; nor did I ever believe, notwithstanding Wilkinson's swaggering letters to me on that subject, which may be seen, that a ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... affair is that? A ready eye for rustling curtains and footholds near open windows, but that is his affair again—until the woman's husband intervenes. And they say he can look after himself in such cases. At least, he lives. Behold him, sahib. Aye, that is he yonder, swaggering as if India can scarcely hold him—that one with his arm in a sling. A Sikh, sahib, with a soldier's heart and ears too big for his head—excellent things on outpost, where the little noises often mean so much, but all too easy for Gooja ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... in the miserable little swaggering dandy before him the author and the promoter of his friend's ruin; on him therefore ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... practical jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a self-respecting naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if not in all technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and artifice, though they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon occasion; a robust sense of honor in all matters which were trusted to their honorable feeling; and, to make an end of this long catalogue, a practical command of language regarded as a means ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say, swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... defense"; not for coast defense alone, but for the defense of all the imperial interests, commercial and political, and even the imperial prestige. And this defense of prestige, it may here be remarked, is not a vainglorious defense, not an exhibition of a swaggering, swashbuckling spirit, but a recognition of the fact that the minds of men are so constituted that the prestige of an individual, an organization, or a nation has a practical value and is an actual force. No government that appreciates its responsibilities will willingly ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... been swaggering after you'd won the race, and they wanted to take the conceit out ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... officers had no faith in the plot, and they regarded it with indifference. A few expressed hostility to it. One captain, who had been a prisoner before and seemed glad to have been captured again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "Some of our officers have got escape on the brain," with other words to the like ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... channel, food and dressings and tobacco. Knitted things, too; for another winter was coming, and already the frost lay white on the fields in the mornings. The little house took on a new air of prosperity. There were days when it seemed almost swaggering with opulence. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... go for improvement in the sciences or the arts, and those who go for mere amusement. As a whole, the former have struck me as being singularly respectable, equally removed from an apish servility and a swaggering pretension of superiority; while, I fear, a majority of the latter have a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... noisy I cannot get to sleep." Then there was a rustle of retreat, and Charlotte leaned against the wall, listening to the hushed turmoil surmounted by that voice of accusation in the parlor. Eddy stood full in the doorway, in a boyish, swaggering attitude, his hands on his hips, and bent slightly, with sharp eyes of intense enjoyment on Minna Eddy. Suddenly, Carroll turned and caught sight of him, and as if perforce the boy's eyes turned to meet his father's. Carroll did not speak, but he raised his hand and ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... haughtily that a great cause made one indifferent to discomfort; and he nearly laughed aloud. He looked across the hall at her and just caught her switching her gaze from him to the platform. He felt a curious swaggering triumph at the flight of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... forward, hands in his pockets, self-possessed, even a little swaggering, and his pale face and bold eyes showed the gravity of the situation and his ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... Watusk, still swaggering, nevertheless visibly weakened. In the end he had to go, just as a child must in the end obey ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... drinking, or smoking, an uproarious materialism which to many women appears only hoggish. You may call the thing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly an essential. It is at root a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual. Nay, its very swaggering and howling are humble. In the heart of its rowdiness there is a sort of mad modesty; a desire to melt the separate soul into the mass of unpretentious masculinity. It is a clamorous confession of the weakness of all flesh. No man must be superior to the things that are common to men. This ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... young men newly outfitted in the colorful uniforms of His Majesty's Militia, short clothes and white wigs, drilling in the market square, swaggering around the town, filling up the new City Tavern. Dances and dinners for the officers were the order of the day. Then came the command for Washington to join Fry in defending British possessions against the French, who had continued their depredations despite the earlier diplomatic parley, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... Messengers. A pretty state of affairs when my couriers are fair game alike for impostors and robbers. I'll make the slyest and the boldest quail at the idea of interfering with one of my despatch riders and I'll exterminate all highwaymen. I'll have no one swaggering up and down Italy, now in Liguria, now in Apulia, mocking the law and its guardians, looting as he pleases, uncatchable, untraceable, hidden and helped by mountaineers and farm-laborers and farmers, even welcomed secretly in villages and towns, acclaimed as King of the Highwaymen, until songs ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... my husband had cleverly got away on his horse, but a young cock-a-whoop ensign, that belongs to Ninety-Six, and four great Scotchmen with him, all in red coats; they had been out thieving, I warrant, and were now going home again. And who but they! Here they were, swaggering all about my house—and calling for this—and calling for that—as if they owned the fee-simple of every thing on the plantation. And it made my blood rise, Mr. Horse-Shoe, to see them run out in the yard, and catch up my chickens and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... and soldiers stood round jeering at us. I seized this opportunity to hail a swaggering Lama and ask him for ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... suffered from the blow upon his tender paws was as nothing compared to the blow to the Griffin's feelings when he realised that his ineffably touching picture of the Sleeping Beauty had been spoiled for the evening. A great surge of sudden hatred swept over the Griffin at the swaggering intruder who had dared to strike him, and simultaneously the Griffin remembered something he had once heard said by a man in blue wearing a helmet close to where he ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... handshakings; the enveloping hug for Chris and Amos from Becky Boozer, her eyes filled with happy tears and her bonnet trembling with agitation. Her roguish glances and coy giggles flew out like a flock of doves at the sight of swaggering Ned Cilley, who came down the gangplank carrying a macaw in a cage for "Mistress Boozer," and hustled her behind some bales to kiss her warmly. But most of all and best of the day, that first look from Mr. Wicker that spoke more than any gesture or carefully ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... swaggering pannier's load A Farmer's Wife to market rode, And jogging on, with thoughtful care, Summed up the profits of her ware; When, starting from her silver dream, Thus far and wide was heard her scream: "That Raven on yon left-hand oak (Curse on his ill-betiding croak) Bodes me no good." ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... but Goodine paid no attention. "Come back, I tell you!" roared the boss. "The job's yours, so hold on!" Upon this Bill came swaggering back, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... long to wait. From the bend in the ravine came three men, the central figure a man of great stature. He walked proudly, with long, swaggering strides and swinging arms. His long black hair, bearded chin, and beady eyes set under heavy eyebrows, gave a ferocity to his appearance which Ellerey did not find attractive. He looked like a man in whom the barbarian was still active, whose laws of right and wrong and honor were likely ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... I should rather think I know," said Adrian, swaggering. "She has n't a secret from me. She comes from Westmoreland. They 're an old Westmoreland family. But she lives in Kensington. She has one of those jolly old houses in Kensington Square. Historic, romantic, poetic Kensington ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... crowns—lived and died a saintly Jesuit; or whether, on the other hand, he married beneath him, was thrown into gaol, was sentenced to a public whipping, was pardoned and released, and died at the age of twenty-three, full of swaggering and impenitent impudence. Was there but one James de la Cloche, a scion of the noblest of European royal lines? Did he, after professions of a holy vocation, suddenly assume the most secular of characters, jilting Poverty and Obedience for an earthly bride? Or was the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... far less impressive—one could say "smudged"—copy of his brother. Swaggering with an arrogance Ragnar never showed, Garth was a cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Shann realize the unbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer-to-be. He had appeared to know right from their first meeting just how to make ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... his lips or write a word in favor of his election. Mr. Webster, though without the keen personal disappointment of Mr. Clay, was equally discontented with the nomination. He had spoken in a semi-public way for several months previous to the convention, of the folly of nominating "a swearing, swaggering, frontier colonel" for the Presidency,—an allusion to General Taylor, which was scandalously unjust, and which was contradicted by his whole life. When Taylor was finally nominated, Mr. Webster resented the selection as an indignity to the statesmen of the Whig party. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... trotting toward the mostly unconscious men on the ground. He alighted. Hoddan saw him happily and publicly pick the packets of the stun-gun's victims. He came back, beaming and now swaggering in his saddle. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... stop at once with my own weapon, using therewith spirited language, and saying: "I am not going to give it to you! Go and tell Monsignor, your master, that I want the money for my work before I let it leave this shop." When the fellow saw he could not obtain it by swaggering, he fell to praying me, as one prays to the Cross, declaring that if I would only give it up, he would take care I should be paid. These words did not make me swerve from my purpose; but I kept on saying the same thing. At last, despairing of success, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... of such complaints. Englishmen were fretting under their enforced abstinence from the exciting struggles on the Continent. There was no want of Dugald Dalgettys returning from the wars to afford models for the military braggart or the bluff honest soldier, both of whom go swaggering through so many of the plays of the time. Clarendon in his Life speaks of the temptations which beset him from mixing with the military society of the time. There was a large and increasing class, no longer finding occupation in fighting Spaniards and searching for Eldorado, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... beershop—without pausing, and after a glance apiece at the "Royal George" and the "Trusty Anchor," kept on his way to where the "Golden Key" hung out a gilded emblem. It was the best house in Riverstone, and patronized by the gentry, but he adjusted his faded coat, and with a swaggering air entered and ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... proud and swaggering. But at night he tumbled and tossed upon his bed and could not ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum

... he was sitting one morning, surrounded by country people, some asking his advice, some his assistance, others making their grievances known. Amongst the rest was a farmer rather advanced in life, a swaggering sort of fellow, who was desirous to carry his point by impressing the Liberator with the idea of his peculiar honesty and respectability. He was anxious that O'Connell should decide a matter in dispute between him and a neighboring farmer who, he wished to insinuate, was not as ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... most typical American refreshment they could offer to their patrons. But an Indian encampment also claimed American protection, and a group of Western cowboys took pride in their ranch, and even more pride in their swaggering costumes. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... wait till he gets his way, and I guess the tax collectors will make the people sing a different tune about him. If I'm elected to the Assembly this spring, I calculate to make some ears buzz and tingle a bit, once the legislature meets. I'll teach some of these swaggering military chaps—who were n't nothing but bond-servants once yet who some of you fellows is fools enough now to talk of sending to Congress— that this is a nation of freemen, and that now that the British is licked, we don't have no more ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, since I could not possibly avert it. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... such mire has the black motherhood of this race struggled,—starving its own wailing offspring to nurse to the world their swaggering masters; welding for its children chains which affronted even the moral sense of an unmoral world. Many a man and woman in the South have lived in wedlock as holy as Adam and Eve and brought forth their brown ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... she told us on those far-away autumn days, peopling the russet arcades with folk of an elder world. Many a princess rode by us on her palfrey, many a swaggering gallant ruffled it bravely in velvet and plume adown Uncle Stephen's Walk, many a stately lady, silken clad, ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... gravely; Mrs. Norton, the vicar's wife, smilingly stopped Mavis and spoke as if she had been addressing a social equal; then they received greetings from old Mr. Bates, the corn merchant, and from young Richard Bates, his swaggering good-for-nothing son. And then, as passengers gathered more thickly, it became quite like a public reception. "Ma'arnin', sir." "Good day, Mr. Dale." "I hope I see ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... produced a deep impression alike on troops and officers. From Massena his energy and his trenchant orders extorted admiration: and the tall swaggering Augereau shrank beneath the intellectual superiority of his gaze. Moreover, at the beginning of April the French received reinforcements which raised their total to 49,300 men, and gave them a superiority ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... it out too soon, some of these swaggering caballeros around here are going to lose their last winnings," was his answer. And, true to their cavalry instincts, neither of the staff-officers saw fit to follow Van and his rider beyond the gate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... Syme, who had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kind of marine parade until he came to some cafes, embowered in a bulk of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step was slightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme end of the line of cafes, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one gloved finger to a cafe table under ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... enjoyed going to Brighton together. Frank worried Willy, who ran up and down stairs collecting his brown paper parcels, calling upon him to make haste. They set forth, Willy firm and methodical, his shoulders set well back: Frank loose and swaggering, over-dressed. How to get to the shop was a matter of anxious consideration. Willy was fearful of detection, and all sorts of stratagems were resorted to. Sometimes they would walk down to the Old Steyne, and suddenly double and get back through a medley of obscure ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... Berlin, and was likely to be a week or ten days away. This information quite elated Roland. He sold his watch and took the first train to Cornwall. And as he was certain that Elizabeth would have settled his bill at the Black Lion, he went there with all his old swaggering good-humour and thoroughly refreshed himself before ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... it would seem that nowhere in the United States have we found the true America or the real American. Except as abstractions, they do not exist; it is only by looking carefully at each eccentric and irregular America—at Irish New York, at Puritan New England, at the rowdy South, at the rough and swaggering Far West, at the cosmopolitan Pacific States— that we come to reject the anomalous features, and to find America in the points they possess in common. It is when the country is left that there rises in the mind an image that soars above all local prejudice —that ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... distinguished appearance and richly dressed, who appeared to be a prisoner. This discovery redoubled the curiosity of the villagers, who followed the cavalcade as far as the door of the wine-shop. The host came out, cap in hand, and the provost enquired of him with a swaggering air if his pothouse was large enough to accommodate his troop, men and horses. The host replied that he had the best wine in the country to give to the king's servants, and that it would be easy to collect in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... son-in-law, Hon. John Collier.] I have worked hard for a dignity which will enable me to put down his aristocratic swaggering. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... the steward and made him clearly understand that he had to do with a greater personage than he had expected. There was something imposing in the person of the man who sat before him; for this very reason, however, his pride stood on tiptoe, and he asked in a tone of swaggering dignity, though not so sharply and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the port let it be," answered the youth. "I judge my wines by the taste, not by the name." When the wine was brought, he raised his cup with a swaggering laugh. "To the girls you have loved. To the girls I will love." He emptied the cup at a single draught. "There are two times when a long throat is a good throat; when you're wetting it, and when you're cutting it. I'd have ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Kamon-no-kami,(280) the daimyo of Hikone in the province of Mino. On account of the youth of the shogun he was created regent. He was a man of great resolution and unscrupulous in the measures by which he attempted to carry out the policy to which he was committed. By his enemies he was called the "swaggering prime minister (bakko genro)." Assured that the foreign treaties could not be abrogated without dangerous collisions with foreign nations, he sought to crush the opposition which assailed them. The daimyo of Mito, who had been the head of the anti-foreign party at Yedo, he ...
— Japan • David Murray

... to the world; no, mine is in a latent state, what was called vain-glory in the simplicity of the Middle Ages, an essence of pride diluted with vanity and evaporating within me in transient thoughts and unexpressed conceit. I have not even the opportunity afforded by swaggering pride for being on my guard and compelling myself to keep silence. Yes, that is very true; talk leads to specious boasting and invites subtle praise; one is presently aware of it, and then, with patience and determination, it is in one's power to check and muzzle oneself. But my vice of pride is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... the most swaggering of the Chartists still blustered a little, attention could be given to more peaceful concerns. In July Prince Albert went to York, though he could "ill be spared" from the Queen's side in those ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... far graver issues of the convention his thoughts reverted. It was yet early; he lighted a cigar, and in full appreciation of his retirement, took out his note-book and plunged into the affairs of state. Now and then he was recalled to the circumstances of his situation by the swaggering tread of unsteady feet about the house, or when the boisterous shouts below raged above the outside storm; but even then he only glanced up from his papers to congratulate himself upon his ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings; and is not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature,—"Indeed, Mr. Jones," she says,—"it rests with you to appoint the day." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... interrupted the other, holding out a hand in a most quiet and friendly manner; "there must be no misunderstanding between you and me. Men are never greater simpletons, than when they let the secret consciousness of their love of life push them into swaggering about their honour; when their honour has, in fact, nothing to do with the matter in hand. I shall not quarrel with you; and must beg you, in advance, to receive my apologies for any little indecorum into which I may be betrayed by surprise; as for great pieces of indecorum, I ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... scarlet, and white turbans, and carried a Snider rifle and belt stuffed with cartridges slung over the left shoulder. I now noticed with some anxiety that Malak's quiet and undemonstrative manner had completely altered to one of swaggering insolence and bravado. "The chief wishes you to know he has twenty more like this," said Kamoo, pointing to Malak's villainous-looking suite. "Tell him I am very glad to hear it," was my reply, politely meant, but which seemed to ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... side, I would not, indeed, hesitate to meet five such as Nicanor; but such is not the law of this most hallowed empire, nor the sentiments of the three times illustrious Prince who now rules it. Thou art debauched, my soldier, with the swaggering stories of the Franks, of whom we hear more and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... his own steamer ticket in proof of it. That settled Hassan for the time but Georges Coutlass was not so easy. He came swaggering upstairs and thumped on Monty's door with the air of a bearer ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... took place in his own office-parlour, he could not help thinking that Edgar, with his perfect temper, unfailing courtesy, calm self-respect, and steady sense of honour towards the young lady, showed himself the true gentleman in contrast with the swaggering little Major, who seemed to expect that he could bluster the young man out of his presumption, and was quite unprepared for Edgar's cool analysis of his threats. But instead of, like Tom Underwood, cooling down ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intellectually, religiously—Bismarck was the very incarnation of German character. Although an aristocrat by birth and bearing, and although, especially during the years of early manhood, passionately given over to the aristocratic habits of dueling, hunting, swaggering and carousing, he was essentially a man of the people. Nothing was so utterly foreign to him as any form of libertinism; even his eccentricities were of the hardy, homespun sort. He was absolutely free from social vanity; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... the rejected fish still hanging by its tail from his expostulating hand; one might almost have imagined it the same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little. Only the foolish children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere sucking babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I had known now mincing it as men and women; such ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... I mull in these matters?' she asked him piteously, 'or why must poor Tom? God help him, he found me bread when you had left me to starve.' It came to her as pitiful that her cousin, swaggering and unconscious, at a great distance, should be undone because these men quarrelled near her. He moved stiffly round again—he was so bolstered over with ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... about the same time apprised of his son Louis's success on the banks of the Loire. The incapacity and swaggering insolence of King John had made all his Poitevine allies disgusted with him; he had been obliged to abandon his attack upon the King of France in the provinces, and the insurrection, growing daily more serious, of the English barons and clergy for the purpose of obtaining Magna Charta was preparing ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Pshaw! Is it not as plain as impudence, That you're in love with this young swaggering beggar, 205 Bethlen Bathory? When he was accused, Why pressed you forward? Why ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... beasts of whom fanciers will tell you that 'they go chopping and mincing and dancing about,' meaning thereby that they prance and throw out their fore-legs to right and to left without making much headway. Middle-aged merchants have a great fancy for such horses; their action recalls the swaggering gait of a smart waiter; they do well in single harness for an after-dinner drive; with mincing paces and curved neck they zealously draw a clumsy droshky laden with an overfed coachman, a depressed, dyspeptic merchant, and his lymphatic wife, in a blue silk mantle, with a lilac handkerchief ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... fishing, the skunks were still there, and the quarrel had recommenced. The result was no different. Charley finally issued out of the teepee beaten, and the little carcasses flew out of the door after him, propelled by a vigorous foot. Charley, swaggering abroad as a man does who has just been worsted at home, sought his ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... you. Had he been an old man in a humble station of life, instead of a proud and swaggering officer, I should not have minded so much. But, as it was, I could not, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, etc., in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at that time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were, till this time, new to me; but I was no enemy to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... his chair close to mine, and as he knew my special weakness, the scamp continued: "Just think what a swaggering thing it will be to do and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... at the excesses of his troops in unmeasured terms. True, he had much provocation. The militia officers under him were a loose swaggering set, whose cruelties to the peasantry during the prolonged search for arms were unpardonable. Further, their powers had been enlarged by Camden's order of May 1797, allowing them to use armed force without the requisition of magistrates, a step deemed necessary to screen the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... Captain Cram with his swell light battery, with officers and men in scarlet plumes and full-dress uniforms, was a revelation to the sombre battalions whose officers had not yet even purchased their epaulettes and had seen no occasion to wear them. But when Cram and his lieutenants came swaggering about the garrison croquet-ground in natty shell jackets, Russian shoulder-knots, riding-breeches, boots, and spurs, there were not lacking those among the sturdy foot who looked upon the whole proceeding with great disfavor. Cram had two "rankers" ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... industrious, and often very handsome; a far shrewder fellow too—owing to his dash of wild forest blood from gipsy, highwayman, and what not—than his bullet-headed and flaxen-polled cousin, the pure South Saxon of the chalk downs. Dark-haired he is, ruddy, and tall of bone; swaggering in his youth: but when he grows old a thorough gentleman, reserved, stately, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... face grew pale. He knew now for the first time that Angele and her father were in England, and he looked Lempriere suspiciously in the eyes; but the swaggering Seigneur met his look frankly, and bowed with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without having ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... ending in the gallant Colonel being under the supper table, a thing only too common, but not in the house of a solitary lady who had only lately quitted the carousers. Half the dependants on the estate were complaining of the guest's swaggering overbearing treatment of themselves, or of his insolence to their wives or daughters; and Betty lived in a dreadful unnamed terror lest he should offer some impertinence to her father which the veteran's honour might not brook. However, there was something ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the saddle-bow, And the Quaker was never a quaker till now! And he saw, by the fair one he wished for a bride, His purse borne away with a swaggering stride, And the eye that shamm'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... "Swaggering over the stones, Those shabby bucks did walk; And I went and followed those needy ones, And listened to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... expansive influence of wine, would part with almost anything they or their neighbors possessed, for a consideration. There were Mexicans who would sell horse, saddle, and bridle for that amount, especially when thirsty—for seventeen dollars meant unlimited vino and a swaggering good time—for a time. Pete knew this only too well. He suggested the idea to Andy, who ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Little-Faith would have had their revenge and satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little- Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under the small cords of the Shining One. This word of the wise man, that pride goeth ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... Hyde laughed heartily. "You swaggering dandy!" he replied. "Did you take a bet at the Belvedere to intrude on His Loftiness? And have you a guinea or two on supping a cup of coffee with him? Upon my honour, you must now be nearly at the end of your follies. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... now, and Jack walks swaggering about his wicket, with his bat over his shoulder, while Mr. Aislabie holds a short parley with his men. Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning man, goes on to bowl slow twisters. Jack waves his hand triumphantly towards the tent, as much as ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... of course there were, and are always—those happy beings in whom Nature has implanted a love of slang: who loitered about the horsekeeper's stables, and drove the London coaches—a stage in and out—and might be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early mornings, and indulged in dice and blind-hookey at nights, and never missed a race or a boxing-match; and rode flat-races, and kept bull-terriers. Worse Snobs even than these were poor miserable wretches who did not like hunting at all, and could not afford it, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... frightening because it is you who are slipping. Soon or late you find that some familiar mannerism of your spouse displeases you. It may be a slight uncouthness at table, a peculiar back-country phrase or pronunciation, some gesture of timidity or swaggering. Once you loved it as a part of the individuality of the person you fell in love with. Now it vexes you. And your vexation terrifies you. Does this mean that you no longer love your mate as you did? You cannot help your change of feeling. How, then, can you hope to keep ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... atmosphere of their pictures; it is the subject of their pictures. They paint portraits of the weather. The weather sat to Constable; the weather posed for Turner—and the deuce of a pose it was. In the English painters the climate is the hero; in the case of Turner a swaggering and fighting hero, melodramatic but magnificent. The tall and terrible protagonist robed in rain, thunder, and sunlight fills the whole canvas and the whole foreground. Rich colours actually look more luminous on a grey day, because they are seen aganst a dark background, and seem to be burning ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... be a joke when the governor and the mater are there on the first night? They'll be frightfully pleased. You must try and prevent the mater swaggering about it too much, you know. She's such a dear, she's sure to be absurdly proud of it. And it'll be a bit of a score off the governor in a way, too. He never would have thought I could do it, would he? And Raggett will be surprised, too. You must have a ripping new dress ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... began to rave and would certainly have done himself or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man almost as wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would never enter the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the swaggering air of a man who had ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... at the picked hussars, at the famously infamous Cossacks, and assented modestly. So plain in gray, he did indeed look colorless among them. The Contra at his elbow was an American, whose brutish, swaggering scowl meant the world to know what a bad man he was. The type gives the decent citizen a mad desire to be bad himself just once, only long enough to prove the tough a contemptible sham. Driscoll's neighbor leered ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... silent faithful soul, who loved the boy and petted him, and mourned in secret over his miserable upbringing, but who, having no store of words to tell her thoughts, could only be dumbly kind to him, and careful of his childish hurts and ailments; the boy ate and drank with the men, and aped their swaggering and blasphemous ways, which made them laugh and praise his cunning. The Lord Marmaduke had been nursed back into a sort of poor life, and sate all day in a fur gown in the solar, with a velvet cap on his head to hide his wound, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... hard to get enough to live upon; however, one day he came upon the tiger's den when the father and mother tiger were out hunting, and there he saw the two tiger cubs with a large piece of venison which their parents had brought them. Then the jackal put on a swaggering air and began to abuse the tiger cubs for having so much venison, saying: "I am the sipahi of the Raja and the Raja has demanded venison and none can be found, while low people like you have a fine piece like this: give it at once or I will take it and report against you to the Raja." Then ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... elemental control and moderation, I found the character and manners of the people gentler and sweeter than I had been led to believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, impertinence; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at women, no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, no insolence of porters or clerks or conductors, no importunity of bootblacks or newsboys, no omnivorousness, of hackmen,—at least, comparatively ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Dick; and taking her by the arm, started in the direction of "The Goat in Boots," walking with a curiously swaggering gait which went far to mask his limp. "Amigos de grillos—fetter-pals. We were chained ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... taking their stand, Calm, able, and upright, harmonious, and strong, In peace and prosperity ruling the land. Firm, faithful, and free? What they say they will do— No Right unprotected, no Wrong unredress'd; While writers of Letters And all their abettors Stand in swaggering impotence caught and confess'd." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... appears to have been written by Pickle on his return from France, early in December. It is amazing to find that, if we can believe a spy, Lord Elibank himself was in the plot. The scene between the political economist and the swaggering Celt, when Pickle probably blustered about the weakness of deferring the attack which he had already betrayed, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... out of the corner of my eye while she crouched down at the hearth, with her head in the opening of the fireplace. I do not know how I then found the courage to speak, but I did so without much hesitation. I got up, and, walking up and down the room, observed in a careless tone, with that swaggering manner ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... the table a photograph enclosed in a photograph-case of sky-blue plush, in which Marianne recognized a swaggering fellow with flat face, large hands, fierce, bushy moustache, who leaned on a cane, swelling out his huge chest in outline against a mean, gray-tinted garden ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... least reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Awang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love with the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... bit, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you wait a bit," he began, with a swaggering emphasis on each word, "it's your first duty to understand here that you are on a polite visit to Mr. Kirillov, Alexey Nilitch, whose boots you might clean any day, because beside you he is a man of culture ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... can understand rather more than he supposes," muttered Dick, walking with head erect, and nose in the air, and a sort of swaggering step, which he probably thought best suited for ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbed a peak of wisdom from which he could perceive ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... nerve with the instinct of flight. Yet she summoned all her resolution and stood still, while Hyde calmly mounted the veranda steps and approached her. He was in riding-dress, and he carried a crop, walking with all the swaggering ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... member from Massachusetts. But these incidents of Southern civilization were not frequent enough to become fashionable. We still clung to our plebeian prejudices against lawless violence, and persisted in believing that a swaggering bully could not be an ornament to cultivated and refined society. In fact, some excellent individuals at the North went so far as to seek to disseminate these old-fashioned notions among their Southern brethren, and made annual subscriptions to what was known (alas, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity. To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You have a soul, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... his feet and an unmistakable oath escaped his lips. All the same, he forced a kind of sickly smile to his face, as a big man, with an exceedingly red face and an exceedingly offensive swaggering manner, came into the dining-room. The stranger was quite well dressed, nothing about his garments offended the eye or outraged good taste, yet, all the same, the man had "bounder" written all over ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... rondavels, shaped in a half-moon, with a flat space between the houses, where grew a big merula tree. All around was a medley of little fires, with men squatted beside them. Here and there a party had finished their meal, and were swaggering about with a great shouting. The mob into which I had fallen was of this sort, and I saw others within the confines of the camp. But around the merula tree there was a gathering of chiefs, if I could judge by the comparative quiet and dignity of the men, who sat in rows ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... side street Yank and Long come swaggering. Long is dressed in shore clothes, wears a black Windsor tie, cloth cap. Yank is in his dirty dungarees. A fireman's cap with black peak is cocked defiantly on the side of his head. He has not shaved for days and around his fierce, resentful eyes—as around those of Long to a lesser degree—the ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... who was habited in a coarse, blue coat, which, without being either a greatcoat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both, had about him that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Occidental. This was a paper (I know not if it be so still) that stood out alone among its brethren in the West. The others, down to their smallest item, were defaced with capitals, headlines, alliterations, swaggering misquotations, and the shoddy picturesque and unpathetic pathos of the Harry Millers: the Occidental alone appeared to be written by a dull, sane, Christian gentleman, singly desirous of communicating knowledge. It had not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... who, if not yet known to rumour, will fill a column of the Sunday paper when he comes to hang—a burly, thick-set, powerful Chinese desperado, six long bristles upon either lip; redolent of whiskey, playing cards, and pistols; swaggering in the bar with the lowest assumption of the lowest European manners; rapping out blackguard English oaths in his canorous oriental voice; and combining in one person the depravities of two races and ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to great trouble, and I know not how to get out of it, having no good excuse, and too late now to mend, he being coming home. Thence home, whither, by agreement, by and by comes Mercer and Gayet, and two gentlemen with them, Mr. Monteith and Pelham, the former a swaggering young handsome gentleman, the latter a sober citizen merchant. Both sing, but the latter with great skill-the other, no skill, but a good voice, and a good basse, but used to sing only tavern tunes; and so I spent all this evening till eleven at night singing with them, till ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... expert, How bitterly he would malign, With many a snare their pathway line! But ye, O happy husbands, ye With him were friends eternally: The crafty spouse caressed him, who By Faublas in his youth was schooled,(5) And the suspicious veteran old, The pompous, swaggering cuckold too, Who floats contentedly through life, Proud of his ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... unhappy Boyd. Going on shore there, he met the notorious George, who stood to greet the strangers, surrounded by a circle of seated tribesmen, whose spears were erect in the ground. But George, despite a swaggering and offensive manner, seems to have been amicable enough. He rubbed noses with Hongi and Ruatara, and shook hands with Marsden, who passed on unharmed to the Bay of Islands. There, by Ruatara's good offices, he was enabled to preach to the assembled natives ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... inclined to, however, and began a game of cards, leaving him to himself to finish his drink. This he did, quickly tossing down both brandy and coffee the instant they were brought to him, and then striding swaggering from the room and mounting his horse, which waited in the street, and riding clattering off over the stones ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... number of mercenaries, who formed a body-guard, called the Foot-Band. The satirical poet, Sir David Lindsay (or the person who wrote the prologue to his play of the Three Estaites), has introduced Finlay of the Foot-Band, who after much swaggering upon the stage is at length put to flight by the Fool, who terrifies him by means of a sheep's skull upon a pole. I have rather chosen to give them the harsh features of the mercenary soldiers of the period, than of this Scottish Thraso. These partook of the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... his harsh reprimand of the other. But to-day a hired man stood at the scales to see the cotton weighed. The Major walked abroad throughout the fields. As he drew near, the negroes hushed their songs and their swaggering talk. They bowed respectfully to him and to one another whispered his affliction. At noon, when he returned home, the housekeeper told him that his wife was away. He sat down in the library to wait for her. Looking out he saw Sallie Pruitt carrying ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... broad white stripe, strapped over half-wellington boots adorned with glittering swan-neck spurs, a pill-box cap with white band and button, perched jauntily on three hairs—also looked what he was, the ideal heavy-cavalry man, the swaggering, swashbuckling trooper, beau sabreur, good ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... did, if she do," he murmured hopelessly, "she never will let me know it, since her father forbids a thought of me; and now here is this trial of skill at the duke's order come to make things worse, and if that swaggering Berengario of Fano win her, then truly will I join the free lances and pray heaven send ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... scuffled out of sight in a fright, having learnt the lesson that a small tyrant, however grandly he may dress, is not always believed in; for with all his bright colours and gaudy plumes he was no match for the great sober-hued, flap-winged heron, who only laughed at him, and all his grand swaggering; and, as soon as he was gone, settled himself down to his work, and caught fish enough for a good meal, for he felt quite certain that he had as good a right to the fish as the little king, who had had it his own ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... is Meredyth, with a "Y," as my poor mother used proudly to say, though what advantage a "Y" has over an "I," save that of a swaggering tail, I have always been at a loss to determine; Major Duncan Meredyth, late R.F.A., aged forty-seven; and I live in a comfortable little house at the extreme north end of the High Street, standing some way back from the road; so that in fine weather I can sit in my front garden ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... My scrap-book from the year 1883 to 1896 is one running comment on the Bend and upon the official indolence that delayed its demolition nearly a decade after it had been decreed. But it all availed nothing to hurry up things, until, in a swaggering moment, after four years of that sort of thing, one of the City Hall officials condescended to inform me of the real cause of the delay. It was simply that "no one down there had been taking any ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... swaggered after him. She had been swaggering all the evening. She acted like a duchess at a slumming party. The ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... Richard, suddenly assuming a swaggering air which Moncharmin did not like. "I knew nothing either! You put twenty-thousand francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... "Of course, my swaggering buccaneer, if you want to do it in the grand manner," answered Frederick, "I'll arrange for the saucy little cutter, the sequestered cove an' the hard-riding exciseman with a cocked hat and cutlass. But the simpler if less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... acquaintance from whom Salina had parted took a last look at the house, and shook his envious head darkly at the room where the light and the music were; then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, with a swaggering air, went plodding on his lonely way across the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... Buckingham," growled a burly, unwashed brute, swaggering truculently before me. "And who are you who would ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... heaped up close by, and pails of goat's or camel's milk abound; and amid all these sit rows of countrywomen, haggling with tall Persians, who in broken Arabic try to beat down the prices, and generally end by paying only double what they ought. The swaggering, broad-faced, Bagdad camel-drivers, and ill-looking, sallow youths stand idle everywhere, insulting those whom they dare, and cringing to their betters like slaves. Persian gentlemen, too, with grand hooked noses, high caps, and quaintly-cut dresses of gay patterns, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... character. He claimed to have been a soldier. He certainly looked the part, for his fierce white moustache was curled up like horns on his purple face, at each side of his red nose, in a most milita style. His shoulders were square and his gait was swaggering, beside which, he had an array of swear words that was new and tremendously impressive in Connecticut. He had married late in life a woman who would have made him a good wife, had he allowed her. But, a drunkard himself he set deliberately about bringing ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... handsome; and a far shrewder fellow too—owing to his dash of wild forest blood, from gipsy, highwayman; and what not—than his bullet-headed and flaxen- polled cousin, the pure South-Saxon of the Chalk-downs. Dark-haired he is, ruddy, and tall of bone; swaggering in his youth; but when he grows old, a thorough gentleman, reserved, stately, and courteous as a prince. Sixteen years have I lived with him hail fellow well met, and never yet had a rude ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... were not symbols of religion, unless this was a time when the Master's coming meant the sword. Under them were soldiers with big pistols and belts of big, gleaming cartridges—soldiers, white and black, everywhere—swaggering, ogling, and loud of voice, but ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... wages in the hearts of the unemployed. Envious eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a few days before he had been as the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie

... that the older cynics and critics already alluded to at once improved the occasion. 'What more could be expected? Women, the world over, were noted for this sort of thing! This long-haired, swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had captivated them, as he always had done since the days of Homer. Simple merit, which sat lowly in barrooms, and conceived projects for the public good around the humble, unostentatious stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon learn ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... gayest painted face. He knows that we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin? away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is not lost that ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler



Words linked to "Swaggering" :   adventuresome, adventurous, proud



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