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Unwieldy   /ənwˈildi/   Listen
Unwieldy

adjective
1.
Difficult to use or handle or manage because of size or weight or shape.  Synonym: unmanageable.  "Almost dropped the unwieldy parcel"
2.
Difficult to work or manipulate.
3.
Lacking grace in movement or posture.  Synonyms: clumsy, clunky, gawky, ungainly.  "Clumsy fingers" , "What an ungainly creature a giraffe is" , "Heaved his unwieldy figure out of his chair"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books



... Colony as it came to be called, managed their own affairs in their own way for seventy years. At first the men assembled in town meeting, made laws, and elected officers. But when the growth of the colony made such meetings unwieldy, representative government was set up, and each settlement sent ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... flickering, half-lighted life; the blood she gave it thin with her own weariness and vitiate from its drunken sire; the form she gave it soft-boned and angle-headed, more like overgrown embryo than child of the boasted Australian land. Even the milk it drew from her unwieldy breasts was tainted with city smoke and impure food and unhealthy housing. Its playground was the cramped kitchen floor and the kerb and the gutter. Its food for a year had been the food that feeds alike ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... exempted from corporal punishment, while the Justice was made responsible to the cortes for the faithful discharge of his duties, under penalty of death. [63] As this supervision of the whole legislature was found unwieldy in practice, it was superseded, after various modifications by a commission of members elected from each one of the four estates, empowered to sit every year in Saragossa, with authority to investigate ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... the bag and shawl made such an unwieldy bundle that his progress was very slow, and he stopped more than once to rest and take breath, and as often as he stopped the blue eyes would look up enquiringly at him with an expression which made his boyish heart beat faster as he thought what pretty eyes they were and wondered who ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... or Gore Vale? Room for two still in the 'Lightning' 'bus! No more?—then we are off. Link arms, ladies and gentlemen;" and the unwieldy apparatus was started. The couplings divided half-way down. About seven reached the bottom, the remaining five were upset, and were left there. Cecil was in the latter division, and having extricated herself from the debris, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... bristles,— What beauty hath the leafless tree, through which the cold wind whistles? How unadorned the noble horse, when of his beauteous mane he's shorn! O! who would love a purring cat, all in her furlessness forlorn. Ah, look around my darling pig! look on all living things, From the huge unwieldy mammoth to the smallest bird that sings;— Were these not shagged or feathered all, how loudly should we jeer;— Who would warmly strive to please e'en man, were ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... accompanied it, and was in personal attendance upon the Egyptian monarch. It appears that in the time of Thothmes III. the elephant haunted the woods and jungles of the Mesopotamian region, as he now does those of the peninsula of Hindustan. The huge unwieldy beasts were especially abundant in the neighbourhood of Ni or Nini, the country between the middle Tigris and the Zagros range. As Amenemhat I. had delighted in the chase of the lion and the crocodile, so Thothmes III. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... go." Having dropped to the raft, and seized a short paddle, he joined Joe and the engineer in forcing the unwieldy raft away from the side of ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell

... should push on and get first to the Arickara village. The scenery and objects, as they proceeded, gave evidence that they were advancing deeper and deeper into the domains of savage nature. Boundless wastes kept extending to the eye, more and more animated by herds of buffalo. Sometimes these unwieldy animals were seen moving in long procession across the silent landscape; at other times they were scattered about, singly or in groups, on the broad, enameled prairies and green acclivities, some cropping the rich pasturage, others ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... the heavens were rent with a great cry, The red avengers went right on, right on, For none could let them; then was ruin, reek, flame; Against th' unwieldy huge leviathans They drave, they fell upon them as wild beasts, And all together they did plunge and grind, Their reefed sails set a-blazing, these flew loose And forth like banners of destruction sped. It was to look on as the body ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... triumph of the truth over this tissue of falsehoods. Still, explain it as we may, the fact remains that in no later play does Ibsen initiate us into the preliminaries of his action by so hackneyed and unwieldy a device. It is no conventional canon, but a maxim of mere common sense, that the dramatist should be chary of introducing characters who have no personal share in the drama, and are mere mouthpieces for the conveyance of information. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... old boat was pushed down the sloping sandy shore and into the mill-pond. Hugh and Thad sprang aboard and each snatching up a paddle, they commenced to urge the unwieldy craft along ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... could be more striking than the contrast presented by this huge, clumsy, misshapen, obsolete engine of war, and the spruce, trim, shining, comparatively little cannon (mere pocket-pistols for Bellona) which furnished the battery just below our stand, and which, as soon as the unwieldy old warrioress had occupied the post of honor reserved for her in their midst, sent forth a martial acclaim of welcome that made the earth tremble under our feet, and resounded through the air, shivering, with the strong concussion, more than one pane ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... left his eager glance swept the river's widening reach. Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal mounds of coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs; steam cargo boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old paint; a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... mouths, idly lashing their sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clambered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their rifles, but before they got back the buffaloes had crossed the bluff crest. Climbing after them, the two hunters found, when they reached the summit, that their game, instead of halting, had struck straight ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... class. They are represented by men who disguise their bodies in dense masses of sago leaves and their faces in grotesque masks with long hooked noses. In this costume the maskers jig it as well as the heavy unwieldy disguise allows them to do. But the dance consists in little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional hop; the orchestra stands in the middle, singing and thumping drums. Sometimes two or three of the masked men will make a round of the village, pelting the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... cannot be overrated. Even in the case of the best of these islands, it would demoralize and degrade the national suffrage almost incalculably below the point already reached. To the Senate, unwieldy now, and greatly changed in character from the body contemplated by the Constitution, it would be disastrous. For the present States of the Union it would be an act of folly like that of a business firm which blindly steered for bankruptcy by freely admitting to full partnership ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... mustachios and the long beard which flows over his breast. His complexion is somewhat lighter than that usual among the Turks, and his general appearance does not indicate more than his actual age ... The neck is short and thick, the figure corpulent and unwieldy; his stature I had afterwards the means of ascertaining to be about five feet nine inches. The general character and expression of the countenance are unquestionably fine, and the forehead especially is a striking and majestic feature. Much of the talent of the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... the stitches were cut, fell five blank books of different sizes. Two, of convenient dimensions, might have been intended for diaries; the other three, somewhat unwieldy, were partly used ledgers from Judge P. H. Morgan's office. They were closely written in a clear, firm hand; the ink, of poor quality, had faded in many places to a pale brown scarcely darker than the deep yellow to which time had burned the paper. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... my companion, announced his readiness to depart. I made my farewell calls, and we packed our baggage into my tarantass, with the exception of the terrible trunk that adhered to me like a shadow. As we had no Cossack and traveled without a servant, there was room for the unwieldy article on the seat beside the driver. I earnestly advise every tourist in Siberia not to travel with a trunk. The Siberian ladies manage to transport all the articles for an elaborate toilet without employing a single 'dog house' or 'Saratoga.' If they can do without ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... populous and yet poor (as were the ancient Gauls and Scythians), so that numbers, unless they are well employed, make the body politic big but unwieldy, strong but unactive, as to any ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... visited Ipswich to report an election for The Morning Chronicle; and probably a similar mistake happened to him to that which Mr. Pickwick experienced. So when he says, "The 'Great Horse' is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig—for its enormous size," he evidently was recalling an impression ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... spirit in which they were given. Although it is the invariable custom among the North American Indians for the husband to rule the wife, and impose all burdens upon her, except those of the hunt, and fight, such, by no means, was the case with the present couple. Hans Vanderbum's body was too unwieldy for him to accompany the young men (or even the old men) upon their hunting expeditions; in short, he contributed nothing toward the support of his interesting family. The first husband of Keewaygooshturkumkankangewock had been an Indian, with all the characteristics of his race—indolent, selfish ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... boats, and these, in spite of the fire of the enemy, brought her head round before the wind, and she made her way through her antagonists and got clear. For several hours the battle continued. The Spanish fire was so slow, and their ships so unwieldy, that it was rarely they succeeded in firing a shot into their active foes, while the English shot tore their way through the massive timbers of the Spanish vessels, scattering the splinters thickly among the soldiers, who had been sent below to be out of harm's way; but ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... closed on the handle—and on the instant, as though in startled amazement, shifted to the dial. They came back to the handle—a wrench—then a low, amused chuckle—and the door swung open. The great, unwieldy thing was only a monumental bluff! It not only had not been locked, but it COULD NOT be locked—the mechanism was out of order, the bolts could not be moved by so ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... was fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these are numbered—a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had already ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... midst of war, pestilence, conspiracy, general corruption, and with the weight of so unwieldy an empire upon him, we may easily comprehend that Antoninus often had need of all his fortitude to support him. The best and the bravest men have moments of doubt and of weakness; but if they are the best and the bravest, they rise again from their depression by recurring to first principles, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... The House of Commons has long been noted as the best club in England; and this sense of fellowship, of continuing friendship and intimacy, gives a charm to English parliamentary life which is hardly possible with the unwieldy numbers and huge hall of our own House of Representatives, but does spring out of the smaller and continuing membership of the Senate. A class in debating should have the sense of comradeship which comes of hard work together and the trying out ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... congregated Husbandmen lay waste The vineyard and the harvest. As along The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line, 410 Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon, Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease, In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk, Ocean behind him billows, and before A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand. 415 And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark, Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War, And War, his straind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of grunts close by and some big unwieldy animal went rushing away through the dense undergrowth, crashing along as though badly frightened at this queer thing that had dropped down ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... pushed the frontier westward, pricked onward by a ceaseless unrest, "the old land hunger" that never was appeased. The forests rang to the stroke of their ax, the slow, untroubled rivers of the wilderness parted to the plowing wheels of their unwieldy wagons, their voices went before them into places where Nature had kept unbroken her vast and pondering silence. The distant country by the Pacific was still to explore and they yoked their oxen, and with a woman and a child on the seat started ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... God. He was also in friendship with Ahab's son, who was king of Israel; and he joined with him in the building of ships that were to sail to Pontus, and the traffic cities of Thrace [3] but he failed of his gains, for the ships were destroyed by being so great [and unwieldy]; on which account he was no longer concerned about shipping. And this is the history of Jehoshaphat, the king ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... originally proposed to give the history of Russian Jewry after 1825—the year with which the first volume concludes—in a single volume. This, however, would have resulted in producing a volume of unwieldy dimensions, entirely out of proportion to the one preceding it. It has, therefore, become imperative to divide Dubnow's work into three, instead of into two, volumes. The second volume, which is herewith offered to the public, treats of the history of Russian Jewry from the death ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... two days to do this, for Mr. Bittacy insisted on the branches being moved entire. He would not allow them to be chopped; also, he would not consent to their use as firewood. Under his superintendence the unwieldy masses were dragged to the edge of the garden and arranged upon the frontier line between the Forest and the lawn. The children were delighted with the scheme. They entered into it with enthusiasm. At all costs this defense against the inroads of the Forest must be made secure. ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... was also of the type: homespun and buckskin, hair long and face unshaven. He straightened from a passage which was not low, then turning pushed the unwieldy door shut. It closed reluctantly, with a loud shrilling of its frost-bound hinges and frame. In a moment he dropped his hands and impatiently kicked the stubborn offender home, the suction drawing a puff ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... almost aghast. Never in my life had I seen anything so grotesque as this woman. To begin with she was more than ordinarily stout and unwieldy—indeed, she appeared like a veritable mountain of flesh; but what was so disturbing to my mind was that she was nothing but a hideous caricature of her lovely daughter, whose dainty features she grotesquely ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... aground off the coast of Flanders, as submerged sandbanks are everywhere to be encountered, and this would have been in our present case a most unfortunate occurrence. This continual stopping rather disturbed the order of our march, for steamers are more unwieldy and less accustomed to rapid maneuvering than war vessels. Luckily all went well with us, for after a fine trip of several hours we gladly greeted our German guard-ships lying off the port of Zeebrugge, and the ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... at night, when the Amadan was sleeping soundly, up comes a cailliach [old hag] and four badachs [unwieldy big fellows], and the cailliach carried with her a feather and a bottle of iocshlainte [ointment of health], with which she began to ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... he said, in the course of forty years had never been able to get a day off to go "a-fishing," managed, now and then, to find an evening of leisure in which to divert himself with the pleasant, bookish talk at No. 53. A salon as "was a salon"—that of the Cary girls. With the vast, unwieldy city of today in mind we wonder how they managed it, by what charm and persuasion they gathered with such regularity so many of the literati really worth while. But it was a smaller town then. It was easier to be neighbourly. When Thackeray, on the evening ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... direct them in the emergency. Just as the front of the phalanx was within short rifle distance, he discharged his rifle and brought down one of the bulls, that seemed to be a file leader, by a ball between the horns. The unwieldy animal fell. The mass raised a deafening sort of bellow, and became arrested, as if transfixed to the spot. A momentary confusion of the mass behind ensued. But, borne along by the pressure of the multitudes still in the rear, there was a gradual parting of the herd direct from the front, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... birds, unwieldy in their motions, slow and lumbering in their flight. Their legs are thick, and their toes are ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the courtiers ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Spaniards, its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans, who, facing about to the right and left, charged it home, and threw it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by thousands, whilst the Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in their turn, were barring further progress in front, and whilst the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks, Hasdrubal, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... the day was the arrival from the main of a very large canoe, with twenty-six people on board.* When close to she shortened sail and attempted to paddle up, but being too unwieldy to stem the current, the end of a rope from the ship was carried out to her and she hauled up under our stern and made fast there. Besides the ordinary paddles we observed at each end two others of large size—probably used for steering with, pulled as oars, with cane grommets on the gunwale. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... steady and persisting force, as it is in some older communities. It moves spasmodically and after long periods of quiescence and usually under some stress of excitement, which prevents deliberation and therefore effectiveness. Law being more unwieldy than conditions, naturally lags behind them, and what we have to recognize is a change in conditions and in laws and not an outbreak of lawlessness. Another evil result from the impetuous way in which we make laws is that they are not enforced because they are not ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson

... archaic and otherwise difficult words are given at the foot of the page: but the text has not been disfigured with reference-marks. And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... the unwieldy machine, as the crew heaved with a will, their movements quickened by the urgency of getting under weigh without delay, and each man exerting ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... polygonal, 450 feet long, 78 broad, and 66 feet high. This colossal bulk, equivalent to that of a 7500-ton ship necessary to supply lifting power for the metallic frame, naturally made her unwieldy to handle, unsafe to leave at rest, outside of a sheltering shed, and a particularly attractive target for artillery in time of war. Actual action indeed proved that to be safe from the shells of anti-aircraft guns, the Zeppelins were forced ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... "Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... machines of interest, and which are too unwieldy to be shown here, I am enabled to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... through my brain, I ran one hand hastily along the thwarts of the boat, seeking to discover if paddles had been provided, or even a sail of any kind. I touched a coil of rope, a rude oar-blade so broad as to seem unwieldy, a tightly rolled cloth,—and then my groping fingers rested on the oddest-feeling thing that ever a startled man touched in the dark. It was God's mercy I did not cry out from the sudden nervous fit that seized me. The thing I touched had a round, smooth, creepy feeling ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... who waged it at the ships. To stand aloof where other Grecians stood No longer now would satisfy the mind 820 Of Ajax, but from deck to deck with strides Enormous marching, to and fro he swung With iron studs emboss'd a battle-pole Unwieldy, twenty and two cubits long. As one expert to spring from horse to horse, 825 From many steeds selecting four, toward Some noble city drives them from the plain Along the populous road; him many a youth And many a maiden eyes, while still ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... present Militarist kingdoms of a system of democratic units delimited by community of language, religion, and habit; grouped in federations of united States when their extent makes them politically unwieldy; and held against war by the bond of international Socialism, the only ground upon which the identity of interest between all workers never ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... battle, in which mode of fighting the Romans were superior. That the AEquans were better fitted for depredations and incursions, and that several parties acting in different directions conducted wars more successfully than the unwieldy mass of ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... The imperial consort of the crown of spades; The club's black tyrant first her victim died, Spite of his haughty mien, and barbarous pride. What boots the regal circle on his head, His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread; That long behind he trails his pompous robe, And, of all monarchs, only ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... the head of his unwieldy machine was so critically pointed, that, feeling him fore-right against the tender opening, a favourable motion from me met his timely thrust, by which the lips of it, strenuously dilated, gave way to his thus assisted ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... of policemen trying ineffectually to keep a clear pavement for the racing fire-trucks. Watching his chance, Blount darted out to make the crossing. He was half-way to the opposite curb when an unwieldy hook-and-ladder truck, drawn by a pair of magnificent grays, came lurching and plunging down the side street upon which ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... burden and of the field partake of the general joy; as Thomson says, "Nor undelighted by the boundless spring Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep From the deep ooze and, gelid cavern roused, They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy." ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... is how far the equipment was really the ancient warlike custom of the people. It seems in some respects too elaborate to be the armature of a simple and primitive race. We may reasonably suppose that at least the scale armor and the unwieldy wicker shields (yeppa), which required to be rested on the ground, were adopted at a somewhat late date from the Assyrians. At any rate the original character of the Median armies, as set before us in Scripture, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... likely you'll be on the board," returned Sam. "We shall have a very small list of subscribers, and the board will not be unwieldy if every investor ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... a great confederacy, if it does not obtain decisive success at the outset, before these seeds of division have had time to come to maturity. With what admirable skill and incomparable address Marlborough kept together the unwieldy alliance will hereafter appear. Never was a man so qualified by nature for such a task. He was courtesy and grace personified. It was a common saying at the time, that neither man nor woman could resist him. "Of all the men I ever knew," says no common man, himself a perfect master ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... twelve successive robes of cotton or silk, while the whole is covered with numberless charms enclosed in green leathern cases. Yet under all these incumbrances, they do sometimes mount and take the field, but the idea of such unwieldy hogsheads being of any avail in the day of battle, appeared altogether ridiculous, and it proved accordingly, that on such high occasions, they merely exhibited themselves as ornaments, without making even a show ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... And for diversion went farther into the woods to hear a fiddler and to have him teach me the art which fled my dull fingers and the unwieldy bow. And this fiddler! His curly hair, always wet from his lustrations for the evening meal; his cud of tobacco; his racy locutions; his happy and contented spirit; and his merry wife and the many children, wild like woodland creatures, with ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... darker patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the side of enclosure walls or towers. The prickly pear runs riot in and out among the hedges and upon the walls, diversifying the colours of the landscape with its strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans. In spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom, and when the roadside is starred with asphodels, this country is most beautiful in its gladness. The macchi blaze with cistus flowers of red and silver. Golden broom mixes with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... had left his seat and gone over beside the innkeeper, to whom he began talking in a low voice. The fat man laughed, coughed, and spat, his unwieldy stomach shaking with mirth at his neighbor's jokes, and he bought six hogsheads of claret from him for the spring when the Prussians would ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... theatre might have passed off uneventfully, if it had not been for Fosdick. That unwieldy social vessel broke early in the dinner. Isabelle had placed him next Mrs. Leason because the lady liked celebrities, and Fosdick, having lately been put gently but firmly beyond the confines of the Tzar's realm for undue intimacy with the rebellious majority of the Tzar's subjects, might be ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... flies, to see a sick woman who desired his aid. Doubtless the spell of his buoyant personality does bring comfort and relief. In the adjoining settlement of Bareneed lives an enormously fat old woman of seventy-odd summers. Life passes over her, and its only effect is to make her rotund and unwieldy. When the sick come to Brother Luke for treatment, if any of the few drugs which he has accumulated chance to have lost their labels—a not uncommon contingency in this land of mist and fog—he takes down a likely-looking ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... in proportion to his size. Now the consequence of this general mechanical law is, that as we increase the scale of animals, their means of power, whether muscles of motion or bones of support, must be increased in a more than proportionate degree, or they become utterly unwieldy, and incapable of motion;—and there is a limit to this increase of strength. If the elephant had legs as long as a spider's, no combination of animal matter that could be hide-bound would have strength enough to move them: to support the megatherium, we must have a humerus a foot in diameter, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... questioning to make sure that the landlady had missed nothing, they thanked her and left the house. At his door they saw the man in the cloth cap and overalls. A second and very unwieldy man, with a flushed, unhealthy looking face, had just stopped to speak ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... minutes, as the two men turned, the rope tightened, the raft gradually rose, and soon after stood up edgewise, resting on two of the corner tubs, and without the slightest disposition to topple over. Then the rope was slackened so as to allow enough to act as a painter to moor the unwieldy framework to the side, levers were seized, and inch by inch it was hitched along the deck to the gangway, and then on and on till a quarter of it was outside, when there was a halt for inspection to see if all was right for it to ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... knitted shawl and over her thin cloak she wore an immense mackinaw of flaming hues whose skirts fell 'way below her knees. Over her boots, protestingly, she had drawn on an amazing pair of things made of heavy felt and ending in thick rubber feet, that were huge and unwieldy. Her hands were lost in great scarlet mitts. It is possible that at this time there was little feminine vanity left in her, yet she looked furtively to one side or the other, expecting scoffing glances. She felt sure that she looked ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... hoped or expected to see a living lion, tiger, or elephant—using the common terms that were familiar to the ancients, since they seem to me less unwieldy than those now in general use among us—and so it was with sentiments not unmixed with awe that I stood gazing at this regal beast as, above the carcass of his kill, he roared out his challenge to ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... flatboat a steel pin extended seven or eight inches above the woodwork. When this pin was thrust through the hole in the oar, the great sweep hung almost balanced, and the steersman who used it to guide the unwieldy craft forced the blade of the oar back and forth against the current with the force of his body. The boys found it almost impossible to lift one of ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... the wings had dried and grown firmer in the mild warm current of air and the bright sunlight, she moved them with a wider and bolder sweep. The heavy, unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those currents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings, had taken on a slim and tapering grace. She had reached her fairy perfection. She was ready now for flight and light and love and freedom and the uncharted pathways of the air, ready ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... and late, building the extra barge, dividing the weight and loading the unwieldy machinery, but the best they could do, counting four boats to a trip instead of three, each barge drew from eight to twelve ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... at the date of the last communication the survey of the line had been made thence westward about 150 miles to the neighborhood of the copper mines. The commission on our part was at first organized on a scale which experience proved to be unwieldy and attended with unnecessary expense. Orders have therefore been issued for the reduction of the number of persons employed within the smallest limits consistent with the safety of those engaged in the service and the prompt and efficient ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... for, as he reached the moment when he must duck out the portal, there was a sudden flurry at the other end of the chamber where four of the aliens, under a volley of orders, strove to move an unwieldy piece of ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... "5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the prosaic cutter. The chief element however is a thing 'to take stones out of a horse's hoof.' What a beautiful sensation of security ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... day to solve this problem of enlarging his region and adjusting his burdens. His burdens are many, too numerous for him to carry, but he knows that by adopting a system he can lighten the weight of his load. Whenever they feel too complicated and unwieldy, he knows it is because he has not been able to hit upon the system which would have set everything in place and distributed the weight evenly. This search for system is really a search for unity, for synthesis; it is our attempt to harmonise the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... frisking played All beasts of the earth since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various

... careful not to let him, or any one else, see that she was watching him. And as she watched, her heart ached. Twice she saw him essay a task and fail: once with a box too heavy for him to lift; once with a folding-table too unwieldy for him to carry with his crutches. And each time she saw his quick glance about him to see if others noticed. She saw, too, that unmistakably he was getting very tired, and that his face, in spite of its gay smile, was looking white and drawn, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... city it was in grand parade, on horseback, surrounded by his guards, or in his state coach, an ancient and unwieldy Spanish edifice of carved timber and gilt leather, drawn by eight mules, with running footmen, outriders, and lackeys, on which occasions he flattered himself he impressed every beholder with awe and admiration as vicegerent of the king, though the wits of Granada were apt to sneer at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the hold for three-and-twenty more. O, those closed hatches by night! what torments were the kernel of that ship! Suffocated by the heat and noxious smells; bruised against each other, and by each other's blows, as the black unwieldy vessel staggered about among the billows, the wretched mass of human misery wore away those tropical nights in horrid imprecation; worse than crowded slaves upon the Spanish Main, from the blister of crime upon their souls, and their utter ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... English Navy fought the unwieldy Spanish Armada into bewildered flight and chased it to its death round the hostile ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... was sometimes difficult to strictly apply them. Companies sometimes overran the maximum in a way that rendered them as embarrassing to the regiments in which they were placed, as they were painfully unwieldy to the unlearned Captains and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... to improve the construction or equipment of the vessels, if they appeared defective, either for the purpose of sailing or fighting. It seemed to him, on examining them, that they could not be easily and quickly worked during an engagement, being much heavier and more unwieldy than those of the Carthaginians. As this defect could not be removed, he tried whether it could not be compensated; and an engineer in the fleet succeeded in this important object, by inventing that machine ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... in her early romances, but compared with the setting of "Humphrey Clinker" her glittering world appears pale and unreal. Mrs. Haywood had so framed her style to suit the short, rapid tale of passion that she never moved easily in the unwieldy novel form. Consequently her best narrative is to be found in the digressions, a chapter or two long, which are equivalent to little histories upon the old model. In them the progress of the action is unimpeded, compressed, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... waves. We had hopes, too, of finding penguins. Our expectation as far as the sea-elephants were concerned was not at fault. We heard the roar of the bulls as we neared the head of the bay, and soon afterwards saw the great unwieldy forms of the beasts lying on a shelving beach towards the bay-head. We rounded a high, glacier-worn bluff on the north side, and at 12.30 p.m. we ran the boat ashore on a low beach of sand and pebbles, with tussock growing above high-water ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... and suggested a new form of trigger for the unwieldy crossbows. He saw that as at present discharged it must require some strength, perhaps the united effort of several men, to pull away the bolt or catch. Such an effort must disconcert the aim; these crossbows were worked upon a carriage, and it was difficult to keep the carriage ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... Glorvina, "I believe you stole a spark from heaven to give animation to your idol." He thought the inferiority of Ida was owing to its author's luxurious surroundings. "I cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as well as any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hunger, and I really believe that Addison would have had more point if he had had less victuals; and if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... growth in Roman Equity seems to be exhausted, and the succession of jurisconsults comes to a close. The remaining history of the Roman law is the history of the imperial constitutions, and, at the last, of attempts to codify what had now become the unwieldy body of Roman jurisprudence. We have the latest and most celebrated experiment of this kind in the Corpus ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Instead of the unwieldy and formidable looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. Portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned, from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase, to one so small it will easily slip into a Brownie ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... serious verses of Dunbar that does not seem to me tedious and pedantic. I dare say a few more lines might be found scattered here and there, but I hold it a sheer waste of time to hunt after these thin needles of wit buried in unwieldy haystacks of verse. If that be genius, the less we have of it the better. His "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," over which the excellent Lord Hailes went into raptures, is wanting in everything but coarseness; and if his invention dance at all, it is like a galley-slave in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... their continuance; while, on the other hand, the more intense, however gradual, climatic vicissitudes on land, which have driven all tropical and subtropical forms out of the higher latitudes and assigned to them their actual limits, would be almost sure to extinguish such huge and unwieldy animals as mastodons, mammoths, and the like, whose power of enduring altered ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... keep it the longer. It must be at least eight hours heating with wood, that it be as hot as is possible. If the Brawn be young, it will suffice eight hours or a little more in the oven. But if old, it must be ten or eleven. Put but two Collars into each pot, for bigger are unwieldy. Into every pot, put twelve corns of whole Pepper, four Cloves, a great Onion peeled and quartered, and two bay-leaves, before you put them into the oven. Before they are set in, you do not fill them with water to ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... large and well organized to feel safe against alien aggression, it inevitably became the aggressor itself; and it inevitably carried the conquest of its neighbors just as far as it was able. But domestic security, which is reached by constant foreign aggression, results inevitably in a huge unwieldy form of imperial political organization which is obliged by the logic of its situation to seek universal dominion. The Romans made the great attempt to establish a dominion of this kind; and while their ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... never knew a baby yet that did not go and have the croup, or the colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was imperatively necessary that it should not have them. But there is no help for it. I shudder and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at the heavy, bulky, unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think carpets are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in the whole world. It is impossible to be clean with them under your feet. You may sweep your carpet twenty times and raise a dust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... settlement. The courthouse and the jail, standing directly opposite each other, carried in their faces a family outline of sympathetic and sober gravity. There had been some effect at pretension in their construction, both being cumbrously large, awkward, and unwieldy; and occupying, as they did, the only portion of the village which had been stripped of its forest covering, bore an aspect of mutual and ludicrous wildness and vacancy. They had both been built upon a like plan and equal scale; and the only difference existing between them, but one that ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... escape the cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low growl of surprise, and sniffed at the intruders of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... spirited, an honest creature, courteous, charitable, a giver of alms, and of a jovial humour, a boon companion, and a merry blade, if ever there was any in the world. He was somewhat gorbellied, had a little shake in his head, and was in effect unwieldy of his body. In his old age he took to wife the Bailiff of Concordat's daughter, young, fair, jolly, gallant, spruce, frisk, brisk, neat, feat, smirk, smug, compt, quaint, gay, fine, tricksy, trim, decent, proper, graceful, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... light-armed troops, so called because they carried light round shields instead of the large unwieldy oblong shield of the Hoplite, or heavy-armed infantry soldier. These light troops came gradually into favour with the Greeks during the Peloponnesian war, and afterward became ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... holes in his belt with an unwieldy jack-knife. He suddenly gave off twisting the point of the knife against the leather and lifted it menacingly in the direction of ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... Reform than anybody else; he used to write better against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of war, the weight of the argument, the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being bed-rid in his faculties—he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves himself by turning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time to time not merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics (so that the Political Register is an armoury and magazine for all the materials and weapons ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... Europe. In France Louis XVIII. found himself confronted by an ultra-royalist chamber of deputies which clamoured for vengeance on the partisans of the republican and imperial regimes and for the restoration of the privileges and estates of the Church. Ferdinand VII. of Spain swept away the unwieldy constitution of 1812 amid the rejoicings of his people, who little foresaw his future tyranny; and Great Britain did not venture to resist the action of Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies in abolishing a constitution which British influence had induced him to grant his island kingdom ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... formidable whips went off; the oxen pulled, tossed their unwieldy horns, and bellowed; the Dutchmen growled and shouted; the half-naked "Totties" and Bushmen flung their arms and legs about, glared and gasped like demons; the monstrous waggons moved; "Settlers' Town" was slowly left behind, and our adventurers, heading for the thorny jungles of the Zwartkops ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... the English; the gallant little vessels darted in among the great galleons, and attacked them like little game-cocks fighting huge unwieldy cochinchinas. ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae

... still described as His Majesty's Council for Virginia, had become a large and unwieldy body, with many of its members inactive. Its influence on the conduct of Virginia's affairs was now decidedly less important than in the earlier years. According to the Orders and Constitutions, no one "under the degree of a Lord or principall magistrate" was thereafter to ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... power, was, with paddles, the slowest boat imaginable. There was no lift to her prow, no exhilarating leap as with the typical light canoe driven by regulation paddles. And she was as unwieldy as a log. A light wind blew up-stream, and the current was very slow. After dark we caught up with Bill and Frank, who had supper waiting. I had been tasting venison all day; but there was none for supper. In spite of a night's ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... martial, civil, and religious duties." The Zaparo Indians of Ecuador "will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any heavy meats, such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase." Similarly some of the Brazilian Indians would eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam slowly, lest by partaking of its flesh they should ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... uneven nature of the ground, were unable to form their phalanx with its deep ranks, in which lies the peculiar strength of that order of battle, while the soldiers of which it is composed are armed in an unwieldy fashion which renders them helpless in a hand-to-hand fight. For the Macedonian phalanx[34] is like some huge beast of invincible strength so long as it remains one body, close locked together in serried ranks; but when broken up it loses even the advantage of each individual ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... the Referendum has no counterpart in our own country, unless we except the somewhat unwieldy provisions in various States for the revisions of their constitutions by popular vote. It is undoubtedly the most successful experiment in applying the principles of direct government which has been made in modern times. Having already written more fully upon this subject ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... sight?" [Footnote: Sec. 251.] Now, whatever one's stand on the question of nature versus humanity in art, one must admit that embodying ideals means, in the long run, personifying them. The poet, despising the sordid and unwieldy natures of men, may try, as Wordsworth did, to give us a purer crystallization of his ideas in nature, but it is really his own personality, scattered to the four winds, that he is offering us in the guise of nature, as the habiliments of his thought. Reflection ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... been a colossal struggle against almost overwhelming odds. For a nation as weak, as unwieldy, as corrupt as China to undertake such a stupendous task seems almost inconceivable. Accurate statistics are not available, but it would seem that one-half of the Chinese were in the grip of this vice. In some provinces ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... to observe, that the Peggy was a large unwieldy Dutch-built ship, about eight hundred tons burden, and had formerly been in the Norway, and timber trade, for which, indeed, she seemed, from her immense bulk, well calculated. There being no freight in readiness for America, we were under the necessity of taking in ballast: which ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... who sent that bell in the beginning to send it now again by some marvellous ship." Very fully and wonderfully and beautifully the creature without reason or understanding obeyed its creator, for the very heavy unwieldy rock floated buoyantly and without deviation, so that in a short time they beheld it in their rear with the bell upon it. And when his people saw this wondrous thing it filled them with love for God and reverence ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous

... the nimble hero rushed into a chapel which chanced to be near, and jumped quickly out of a window on the other side. The boar ran after him, and when he got inside the door shut after him, and there he was imprisoned, for the creature was too big and unwieldy to jump out of the window too. Then the little tailor called the huntsmen that they might see the prisoner with their own eyes; and then he betook himself to the king, who now, whether he liked it or not, was obliged to fulfil his promise, and give him his daughter and the half of his kingdom. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... freeborn Greeks to vengeance rise, Brave Sparta springs where first the danger lies, Her self-devoted Band, in one steel'd mass, Plunge in the gorge of death, and choke the Pass, Athenian youths, the unwieldy war to meet, Couch the stiff lance, or mount the well arm'd fleet; They sweep the incumber'd seas of their vast load, And fat their fields with lakes of ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... occur in the complete absense of thyroxin. But they go on in a relatively fixed, rigid and unvarying way, confined within the narrow limits of a constant figure. Under such conditions, the level of energy production is bound to be low, and to remain low, and the modus of its mobilization slow and unwieldy. With thyroid is introduced the trick of catalysis, or the speeding up of the vital chemical reactions, through the agency of an intermediate which accelerates the process. It is par excellence the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... for the last fifty feet, we were literally clinging with our fingers and toes to tiny ledges and crevices in the rock. I could not have accomplished it, nor could Summerlee, if Challenger had not gained the summit (it was extraordinary to see such activity in so unwieldy a creature) and there fixed the rope round the trunk of the considerable tree which grew there. With this as our support, we were soon able to scramble up the jagged wall until we found ourselves upon the small grassy platform, some twenty-five feet ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... public works. That is, they probably excavated canals from the Nile to the quarries, supplementing these, where necessary, with stone roadways or slides, and made other canals from the Nile to the location selected for the buildings, and transported the unwieldy masses of stone on barges to ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... back in dismay as the bull drew near: and she was right; for, in his agony and amazement, the unwieldy but sinewy brute leaped the five-barred gate, and cleared it all but the top rail; that he burst through, as if it had been paper, and dragged Uxmoor after him, and pulled him down, and tore him some ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... clumsy of movement, and stiff in the joints; she had not been so far from the house for three years. The morning breeze filled the gathers of her wide gingham skirt, and aggravated the size of her unwieldy figure. She supported herself with a stick, and trusted beside to the fragile support of Peggy's arm. They were talking together ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have required an experienced ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... as to be almost unwieldy. But her tropical coloring retained its vividness, retained its breath-taking quality of picturesqueness, retained its alluring languor. She sat now holding a huge fan. Indeed, since the day that Honey had piled the fans on the beach, Chiquita had never been without one in her hand. Scarlet, the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... that to be the opinion of the best seamen in Shetland?-I believe it is. For instance, the large boats used in the neighbourhood of Lerwick for herrings have often been lost when the common six-oared boats came safely. These large boats are more unwieldy and more difficult to handle than the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed; And, looking backwards when he looked, mine eyes Saw, over half the wilderness diffused, A bed of glittering light: I asked the cause: "It is," said he, "the waters of the deep 130 Gathering upon us;" quickening then the pace Of the unwieldy creature he bestrode, He left me: I called after him aloud; He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge Still in his grasp, before me, full in view, 135 Went hurrying o'er the illimitable waste, With the fleet waters of a drowning world In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... my time; I rushed—but no— Fate ever mocks an ardent man; Even as I rushed, unwieldy, slow, Bore down a ponderous Pickford-Van, And under two broad wheels crushed flat My loved but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... beasts were now thoroughly wakened and aroused, and they blamed the monkey for disturbing their quiet. The littlest Dragon darted after Woot and the others turned their unwieldy bodies in his direction and followed, flashing from their eyes and mouths flames which lighted up ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... followers; moreover, they were of a very similar character to those of my outward journey, with a few unimportant variations in details. They may, therefore, be passed over with merely this brief reference to them, since to record them in detail would only render my story of altogether too unwieldy dimensions, without adding ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... see eye to eye with Torquemada on matters such as these. Don Francesco disliked all measures of violence, Camorra or freemasonry, Vatican or Quirinal—disliked them so much that he would have hated them had he been built, like the PARROCO, on hating lines. He was too unwieldy, too fond of life, too indulgent towards himself and others to experience at mention of Don Giustino's name anything but a certain feeling of discomfort—a feeling which his acute intelligence, embedded under those ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... In cities the two side judges were generally aldermen. A tribunal thus constituted is better adapted in some respects to trying questions of fact than a single judge. It is a jury of three acting by a majority. But for the conduct of a jury trial it is unwieldy, slow-moving and uncertain. In most cases any question of law or legal practice will be virtually decided by the presiding judge, but he will usually pause to go through the form of consulting his associates. Occasionally they will overrule him, and in such ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... to travel in India by the old cumbrous methods of going on foot or on horseback, in palanquins or unwieldy coaches; now fast steamboats ply on the Indus and the Ganges, and a great railway, with branch lines joining the main line at many points on its route, traverses the peninsula from Bombay to Calcutta in three days. This railway does not run in a direct ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... to Cartagena, hovering about the broad channel between Cuba and Yucatan, or prowling in the Florida Straits, became the nightmare of Spanish seamen. Like a pack of terriers they hung upon the skirts of the great unwieldy fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate vessel which a tempest or other accident had separated from its fellows. When Thomas Gage was sailing in the galleons from Porto Bello to Cartagena in 1637, four buccaneers hovering near them carried away two merchant-ships ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... that kind wants to profit by these admirable models, he must go to London. What happens is that he goes to the capital and stays there. Its superficial attractions are too strong for him. You lose a clever workman and a citizen, and he adds one more atom to that huge, overgrown, and unwieldy community. Now, why, in the name of common sense, should not a portion of the Castellani collection pass six months of the year in Birmingham, the very place of all others where it is most likely to be of real ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley

... god, begin To grow distorted in an ugly grin. And, lest the supplicating brute might reach The ears of Jove, she was deprived of speech: Her surly voice through a hoarse passage came In savage sounds: her mind was still the same. The furry monster fixed her eyes above, 120 And heaved her new unwieldy paws to Jove, And begged his aid with inward groans; and though She could not call him false, she thought him so. How did she fear to lodge in woods alone, And haunt the fields and meadows once her own! How often would the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... a thing that can't have a head. It's a sort of unwieldy monster that's bound to run its skull against the wall sooner or later, and knock out what bit of brain it's got. You see, you need wit and courage and real understanding if you're going to do anything positive. And Labour has none of these things—certainly ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence

... member. A suitable reduction is, I believe, made in the unlikely event of all the members of one family flocking to be enrolled. The existence of this society is a great relief, for it enables us to deal with our unwieldy theme in a light-hearted manner, and to refer those who have a passion for solid information and profound philosophy to the printed transactions of this learned society, which, lest we should forget all about ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... part of our diligence, on the panels of which was written "Fugio ut Fulgor," and though appearances were certainly against anything like compliance with this notice, the result was much nearer than I could have conceived. Five horses were yoked to this unwieldy caravan—two to the pole, and three before, and on one of these pole horses mounted a Driver without Stockings in Jack Boots, crack went an enormous whip, and away galloped our 5 coursers. It is ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... unwieldy and ponderous classic or Italian systems, whose pride cannot stoop to anything beneath the haughtiest uses of life without being broken into the whims of the grotesque and Rococo, the Romantique ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... last drop of blood in defense of their country. But the English fleet, under Sir Francis Drake, put the Spanish ships to flight and sunk a great number of them. And a gale of wind did the rest, wrecking the unwieldy Spanish boats and drowning thousands of Spanish soldiers ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft, and having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard; but yet I brought away several things very useful to me; as, first, in the carpenter's stores I found two or three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screw-jack, a dozen or two of hatchets, and, above all, that most useful thing called a ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... appearance there excited surprise amongst the half-clad, half-starved children that stared at her as she passed along. The street was so narrow that the women, meeting a loaded camel in it, had to stand close to the wall on one side, to suffer the unwieldy beast to pass on the other. Hungry lean dogs were growling over well-picked bones cast forth in the way, evil odours rendered the stifling air more oppressive. But Hadassah went forward as if insensible of any ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... again. When they awoke their chagrin and dread of punishment were extreme. The sentinels, who had been appointed to watch the captive, solemnly averred, in excuse for their neglect, that during the night demoniac spirits had appeared, and had borne away the unwieldy ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... had been seen four weeks before from the coast of Candia, and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost certain clew to the destination of an unwieldy body which could never regain ground lost to leeward; so, although Nelson now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for them. It may be mentioned that these frigates had appeared off the anchorage ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... race, the chiefs they own Were by the eagle's plumage known. The hunted red-deer's undressed hide Their hairy buskins well supplied; The graceful bonnet decked their head; Back from their shoulders hung the plaid; A broadsword of unwieldy length, A dagger proved for edge and strength, A studded targe they wore, And quivers, bows, and shafts,—but, oh! Short was the shaft and weak the bow To that which England bore. The Islesmen ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... constant and judicious exercise to her active intellect, and induced her to visit the quiet parsonage library as assiduously as did Horace, Valgius, and Virgil the gardens on the Esquiline where Maecenas held his literary assize. Instead of skimming a few text-books that cram the brain with unwieldy scientific technicalities and pompous philosophic terminology, her range of thought and study gradually stretched out into a broader, grander cycle, embracing, as she grew older, the application of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... sooner than anyone had anticipated. The next trip that the captain made was for his hammock (he always slept in one), which was a long unwieldy bundle, like a gigantic bolster. He carried it into the parlour on his shoulder, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Pellegrino da San Daniele in 1494 when he returned from an early visit to Venice, where he had been apprenticed to Cima. He was appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the meantime, Pellegrino's years ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... alongside, one on the port, the other on the starboard. Struggling with their unwieldy equipment, the troopers filed down the gangways on to them. Mac sat down by the engine-room manhole and listened to great and wonderful stories from the leading stoker of dashes up the Narrows, long patrols in winter storms, and thrilling times ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... chairs with upright backs and twisted legs, old paintings in massive Florentine frames, and strange quaint pieces of Elizabethan furniture, like buffets, with open shelves full of rare and artistic things—bronzes, ivory carvings, unwieldy Majolica jars, and lovely goblets of antique Venetian glass laced with spiral ornaments of blue and crimson and that dark emerald green of which the secret is now lost ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... of them, and, so far as I could see, all four were Greeks. Two were evidently man and wife. They were both old, both slatternly and almost in rags; the man a thin, sallow-faced fellow, with grey hair and a black moustache; the woman fat, coarse of face, unwieldy of body. Of the other two, one it seemed must be their daughter, a girl of seventeen, not good-looking really, but dressed and turned out with a scrupulous care, which in those sordid and mean surroundings lent her good looks. The care, indeed, with which she ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... lingering among the Pachydermata, I have now left behind me the ponderous and unwieldy forms which inhabit the wild and wooded tracts of the earth's surface, and come to the group called Solipeda, from the one round and horny hoof which encircles all the feet; one toe is apparent; and two points on each side, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... the lady a spear, sharp, heavy, and large, the which she cast all time, stout and unwieldy, mickle and broad, which on its edges cut most fearfully. Of the spear's great weight hear wonders told. Three and one half weights (4) of iron were wrought therein, the which scarce three of Brunhild's men could bear. The noble Gunther gan be sore afraid. Within his ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown



Words linked to "Unwieldy" :   awkward, bunglesome, unwieldiness, clunky, clumsy, cumbrous, wieldy, cumbersome, impractical, unmanageable



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