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More "Jocularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... with a polar bear last night, which has amused the men very much, and given them food for jocularity for a few days. Some days back Davy Butts set a trap on the island, in which he has caught a few foxes. Last night his long legs were so tired that he did not care to visit his trap, so I offered to go instead of him. It was while ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... interesting in this connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... to get acquainted with the manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time under the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Hebraic spirit and genius, rebellious to or transcending the usual limitations of Hebraism; with Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small degree, though somewhat after the fashion ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst with her he had positively assured her that all measures ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... have better illustrated the difference of character between John Westlock and Martin Chuzzlewit, than the manner in which each of the young men contemplated Tom Pinch, after the little rupture just described. There was a certain amount of jocularity in the looks of both, no doubt, but there all resemblance ceased. The old pupil could not do enough to show Tom how cordially he felt towards him, and his friendly regard seemed of a graver and more thoughtful kind than before. The new one, on the other hand, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Dowson turned a deaf ear to his request for information, and it was only when his jocularity on the subject passed the bounds of endurance that she ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he engaged Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was jocularity: she always entered the conversation with ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Cross-Triangle short of horses?" asked Nick, with an evident attempt at jocularity, alluding to the situation of the two men, who were ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... could beat him at the flying game. On his lips the Hun was never the German or the Boche, but always "the festive Hun." You can afford to speak kindly, almost pityingly of some one you are going to vanquish. Hatred often indicates fear. Jocularity is a ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... saw the colonel's little pail only half full, she exclaimed: "O horrows!" and said it was a lasting disgrace. But Mrs. Du Plessis smiled sweetly with her empurpled lips, and the colonel did not mind the disgrace a particle. They all went home very merry and full of innocent jocularity. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Let me tell you a secret. I am not as bilious as I look. If you like, I will cut my hair. There is more innocent fun within me than a casual spectator would imagine. You have never seen me frolicsome. Be a good girl — a very good girl — and one day you shall. If you are fond of touch-and-go jocularity — this ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel invasion ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every wrinkle ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which was the most wonderful, the French or the English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was far from civilization and the engineers welcomed Jim, although they treated him with the jocularity that his youth and inexperience demanded. The novelty of his environment, the romance of the great gray dam, built with such frightful risk and difficulty, absorbed Jim for the first week or so. He ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... pil'd, as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... addressed, had heard the voice of consolation, and its effect was instantaneous; his usual sombre cast of countenance became brightened by the glow of cheerful animation, and he even dwelt on the subject of his unfortunate circumstances with jocularity: ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... many parts of genteel comedy; such as lord Townly, Young Belville, &c. &c. The Bastard in King John, was another fine character of his, which Garrick attempted in vain—having neither sufficiency of figure, or heroic jocularity. To that may be added Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan, in Macklin's farce of Love-a-la-Mode; a part in which he gave such specimens of the gallant simplicity and integrity of the Irish gentleman, as were sufficient to establish an ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... do, and plenty to get, I suppose?' said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 'Oh, quite enough to get, Sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes,' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... which no commentator on Sterne can possibly shirk, but which every admirer of Sterne must approach with reluctance. There is, of course, a sense in which Sterne's humour—if, indeed, we may bestow that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer—is the very reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... this bold course in opposition to one whom he had often entertained, and who had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity, just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... dried his eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, "I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb mefor it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... I had become accustomed to associating with men double or treble my own age. There was nothing corresponding to the gaiete francaise about them, though at times a ponderous playfulness marked their lighter moments, and flashes of elephantine jocularity enlivened the proceedings of the Club. I picked up some useful items of knowledge from them, for I regret to admit that up to that time I had no idea what a bill of lading was, or a ship's manifest; after ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... all some jocularity upon the occasion, but I found I was perfectly safe ; indeed my best security is, that my daddy concludes the author to be a man, and all the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the court will allow you a handsome income. So you must cheer up, in spite of the infliction of a large fortune," added Mr. Newton, with unwonted jocularity. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an unseemly ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... our refusal. We shall be bored but concessive. I confess that there are some things in the prospect of this imitation which haunt me like a nightmare. The British soldier, whom the German knows to be second to none, is distinguished for the levity and jocularity of his bearing in the face of danger. What will happen when the German soldier attempts to imitate that? We shall be delivered from the German peril as when Israel came out of Egypt, and ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other Man." Then ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the following morning he boarded the local train. In one car he found a score of "prospects" already seated, accompanied by half their number of the young men of the real estate office. The utmost jocularity and humour prevailed, except in one corner where a very earnest young man drove home the points of his argument with an impressive forefinger. Bob dropped unobtrusively into a seat, and prepared to enjoy his never-failing interest in the California ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... over, intent. They startled as some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wife entered our apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to seek ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... at all events, should not suspect the grave revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would have been terrified ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the (at the moment) ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... rights, and their common sense? Mr. George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9th clause of the Sunset Bill; but if some better remedy be not applied to the distractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pension, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... to the spot long enough to see the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious appearance of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... regret to have to say that it was a mass of the most frightful incendiarism, delivered with an occasional air of jocularity and dry humour that made my flesh creep. Amidst the persistent attacks on property he did not spare other sacred things. He even made an attack on my position, stating (wrongly) the amount of my moderate stipend. Indeed, I think he recognised me, ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... lifted out of themselves at the thought. After the sermon the Commissioner complimented me on my apostolic earnestness, and Mrs. M'Vicar said I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... time and occasion) somewhat ill-chosen words of familiarity, the Bailie claimed kindred with Rob Roy's wife. But in this he did himself more harm than good, for his ill-timed jocularity grated on Helen Mac-Gregor's ear, in her present mood of exaltation, and she promptly commanded that the Sassenachs should one and all be bound and thrown into the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... witty fellow, Lake; take care your wit don't get you into trouble,' said the baronet, chuckling and growing angrier, for he saw the Hebe laughing; and not being a ready man, though given to banter, he sometimes descended to menace in his jocularity. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... nation of Sclaves, who, from time immemorial, have been conquered subjects of the Hungarians, and who should be punished rather with rods and blows than with the sword.' Thus, and much more in the same strain, spake Andreas. Michael, on the other hand, spoke of his enemy with contemptuous jocularity, as a mounted and perjured priest who had allied himself with the Turks, the enemies of Christendom, whilst he himself claimed to represent fidelity to Christianity and the Empire. Moreover, he held out to his troops tho prospect of great booty if ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... Fort Augustus. There he was beloved by the common people, who looked upon him as a patriot, and there he made it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table deportment, and ordinary mode of living, is ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... hesitated. Now that he had come to practical matters his careless jocularity had given place to a manner of serious deliberation. "Then your father hasn't told you?" ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... has a soft pronunciation. The rein-deer are very fond of salt, and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it, may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will go forth with his handful of salt, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... slang of "the road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... come to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well meant effort at jocularity. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... I had learned all the moods of this man and knew that when he assumed that air of cold, saturnine jocularity it was safe to look for the uncovering of some vaporized trickery. My enthusiasm ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come—oh, not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!—but if you mean that I can ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... pleasantries, called Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... addition to my reserves that furnished us with many a jest. As Bulow had to complete the preparations for his concert, I drove out alone with Cosima on the promenade, as before, in a fine carriage. This time all our jocularity died away into silence. We gazed speechless into each other's eyes; an intense longing for an avowal of the truth mastered us and led to a confession—which needed no words—of the boundless unhappiness which oppressed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... a very nice chap—I think the best of the lot," he began, with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre! There were also two women ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... turns Miss Coleridge's pages, we seem to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Mediterranean in a westerly breeze. But in the smoother waters of the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... course; and you, as my only child—eh, what did I say?" here he stopped hastily with a blank, frightened look—then repeated, "Yes, you, my only child, will be properly introduced to the world. Why, you will be quite an heiress, my girl," continued he, with an excited jocularity that frightened Olive. "And the world always courts such; who knows but that you ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Weatherley remarked, with an unwieldy attempt at jocularity, "that I might be asked out to ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reason, which is unable not only to bridle the speech, but also to restrain outward behavior. Hence a gloss on Eph. 5:4, "Or foolish talking or scurrility," says that "fools call this geniality—i.e. jocularity, because it is wont to raise a laugh." Both of these, however, may be referred to the words which may happen to be sinful, either by reason of excess which belongs to "loquaciousness," or by reason of unbecomingness, which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lines fixed themselves, and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... was ever able to discover whether there was not a slight tinge of underlying jocularity in this remark of Mrs. Brand, for she was a strange and incomprehensible mixture of shrewdness and innocence; but no one took much trouble to find out, for she was so lovable that people accepted her just as she was, contented to let any small amount ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; they had not always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... was in his own state-room that George Wentworth's jocularity came out at its best. He would grasp John Kenyon by the shoulder and shake that solemn man, over whose face a grim smile generally appeared when he noticed the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... want to see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He burst again into ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... back my lady, MacPhail," she said; then added, thawing into something like jocularity, "I shouldn't have looked to you to go running away ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Despite his jocularity he was deeply moved. As the situation grew clearer to him he saw that this girl was about to change the whole current of his careless life; her unexpected firmness, her gentle, womanly determination ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... desperate essay at jocularity, at which Ada laughed with some perseverance, until even she could no longer resist the influence of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... her one keen look. She did not have to explain what the talk was to be about. He understood instinctively. Instantly, his manner changed. The easy jocularity vanished. Once more he was the shrewd, hard, calculating business man. Coldly ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had fibbed, but the informed against told me to look round and see where ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... no heed to this jocularity, or even to Mrs. Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... companionable. At first he was delighted with his new assistant. As time went on, however, the young man's solemnity, his taciturnity, and the quiet, dignified way in which he permitted all attempts at sociability and jocularity to pass over his head, as it were, unnoticed, began to get ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... high spirits, animal spirits, flow of spirits; glee, high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; hedonics^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hope she carried off Flora de Barral to Bournemouth for the winter months in the quality of reader and companion. She had said to her with kindly jocularity: "We shall have a good time together. I am not a grumpy old woman." But on their return to London she sought Mrs. Fyne at once. She had discovered that Flora was not naturally cheerful. When she made efforts to be it was still worse. The old lady couldn't stand the strain of that. And ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... disciples contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Tom, with an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for though he and I differed sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... chains. Some day, perchance, a literary historian, filled with the spirit of Cervantes or of Moliere, will give account of the Victorian era, and, not disdaining small things, will draw a picture of the society which inspired and controlled so resolute a jocularity. Then, at last, will the spirit of Comedy recognise that these were indeed what ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... far the most conspicuous, as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was designed as ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... have listened to the report of my marriage, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of jocularity upon the mournful occasion. Did you really believe it? If you did, you will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that is wonderful in your creed, for I shall reckon your judgment at least three stanzas ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were heard again, his little eyes danced, and his waggish smiles glowed once more, ruddy as a setting sun, through the nectarian vapours of the punch-bowl. The ghosts of Pell and Rogerson fled to their ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must take some time in getting ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in the symphonies. At rare moments he moves you strongly, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... has observed, that a propension to jocularity and humour is apparent in the last works of Swift. His Will, like all his other writings, is drawn up in his own peculiar manner. Even in so serious a composition, he cannot help indulging himself in leaving legacies, that carry with them an air of raillery and jest. He disposes of his three best ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... by a present—now a watch, now some costly lace, and again a lock of his hair, or a simple bunch of dried flowers, while she returns some such homely gift as a little fruit or a fur-lined waistcoat. On both sides, too, a vein of jocularity runs through the letters, as when Catherine addresses him as "Your Excellency, the very illustrious and eminent Prince-General and Knight of the crowned Compass and Axe"; and when Peter, after the Peace of Nystadt, writes: "According to the Treaty I am obliged ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of expediency against temptation to make a speech. House in Committee on Budget Bill; JOKIM been discoursing at large on its proposals. Quite lively. SQUIRE of MALWOOD looked on, listening with generous approval, albeit he was target for JOKIM'S jocularity. This time last year positions reversed. It was he criticising JOKIM'S Budget. Now it was JOKIM'S turn, and the SQUIRE magnanimously stood the racket. Mr. G. sat by his side, an attentive listener, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... the guerilla said, soberly, reaching down to readjust the reins. "I haven't got time now. Will you be waiting fur me here in Tanglefoot Cove—if I promise not to hang you fur your misdeeds right off now?" He glanced up with a sudden arch jocularity. ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... volume were doomed to guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title page? and could it have been possible to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the person of a lodger. Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business, and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the lodger's character. Mr. Pitman had been led to understand his guest was not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... world," continued Mr. Palmer; "this sort of—what do you call it? double-dealing about visitors, goes on every where, Madam Beaumont. But how do I know, that when I go away, you may not be as glad to get rid of me as you were to get away from these Duttons?" added he, in a tone of forced jocularity. "How do I know, but that the minute my back is turned, you may not begin to take me to pieces in my turn, and say, 'That old Palmer! he was the most tiresome, humoursome, strange, old-fashioned fellow; I thought we should never have ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... gusto a little soliloquy on cider delivered by another friend of ours, as we both stood in a decent ordinary on Fulton Street, going through all the motions of jocularity and cheer. Cider (he said) is our refuge and strength. Cider, he insisted, drawing from his pocket a clipping much tarnished with age, is a drink for men of reason and genteel nurture; a drink for such as desire to drink pleasantly, amiably, healthily, and with perseverance and yet retain the command ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of my ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hold—they would have been interesting enough to him at any other time, with their seamed bilious complexions of every degree of swarthiness, set off by the touches of colour in their sashes and head coverings, their strange cries and still more uncouth jocularity—but he soon tired of them, and wandered aft, where the steamer-chairs, their usefulness at an end for that voyage, were huddled together dripping and forlorn on the damp red deck. He was still standing by them, idly turning ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... usually carried off by his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious. As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes pollinated from India. They have another defect, too, though it ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Kisloch and his companions were not very pleasing to Alroy, with the rest of the band they soon became great favourites. Their local knowledge, and their experience of desert life, made them valuable allies, and their boisterous jocularity and unceasing merriment were not unwelcome in the present monotonous existence of the fugitives. As for Alroy himself, he meditated an escape to Egypt. He determined to seize the first opportunity ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... libraries in America—he exercised a baronial hospitality, blending the usual profusion of plantation life with the elegance of a traveled scholar and "picked man of countries." Colonel Byrd was rather an amateur in literature. His History of the Dividing Line is written with a jocularity which rises occasionally into real humor, and which gives to the painful journey through the wilderness the air of a holiday expedition. Similar in tone were his diaries of A Progress to the Mines and A Journey to the Land ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to smile at her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had made a man of Flukey, and bread and molasses ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... by M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... excitement because the Ulster Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, there would have been nothing to mar ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... conviction. The man detected her lack of belief, and that brutal light which was so often in his eyes now suddenly flamed up. But after a moment of effort he banished it, and resorted to an imitation of jocularity. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made proffers of membership to him, partly, it would seem, under the influence of a waggish desire to disturb his great secret, which had not yet been revealed. Dibdin, weighting himself with more than his usual burden of ponderous jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott the desire of the club that the Author of Waverley, with whom it was supposed that he had the means of communicating, would accept of the seat at the club vacated by the death of Sir Mark Sykes. Scott ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... something terrible; nothing was to be heard but an occasional cinder falling from the grate. This lasted, I should say, for twenty minutes, and then he closed his book and flung it on the table. I saw that the game was up, and closed "Anne Judge, Spinster." Then he said, with affected jocularity: "Well, young man, do you know that you are an uncle?" There was silence again, for I was still trying to think out some appropriate remark. After a time I said, in a weak voice. "Boy or girl?" "Girl," he answered. Then I thought hard again, and all at once remembered ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... the cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity: "Thank you, Error—thank you. But why didn't you bring it to me, Terebus? Then you'd have earned that kiss ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... the temporary abode of a Rastignac; but, after all, it is in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, and luxury would be out of place here, where we only aim at the purely patriarchalorama. If you mean to cut a figure in Paris, my young friend," Vautrin continued, with half-paternal jocularity, "you must have three horses, a tilbury for the mornings, and a closed carriage for the evening; you should spend altogether about nine thousand francs on your stables. You would show yourself unworthy of your destiny if you spent no more than three thousand francs ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... quite done smashing my furniture"—Anstice's jocularity was savage—"perhaps you'll be good enough to clear out. I won't pretend I'm anxious for more of your ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the world were all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... her temple with profound adoration, applying their hands at first with religious awe, because, according to the Etrurian usage, no one but a priest of a certain family had been accustomed to touch that statue. Then when some one, moved either by divine inspiration, or in youthful jocularity, said, "Juno, art thou willing to go to Rome," the rest joined in shouting that the goddess had nodded assent. To the story an addition was afterwards made, that her voice was heard, declaring that "she was willing." Certain it is, we are informed that, having been raised from her place by ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Sterry," he said, assuming an affected jocularity which deceived no one, "I'll own you've played it on me mighty fine. But you can't stand there all night with your Winchester p'inted at me, and bime-by I'll git tired; can't we fix the matter ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... as if she had guessed truly; for Cristal Nixon at that moment rode up to them, and said, with an affectation of jocularity, which sat very ill on his sullen features, 'Come, young ladies, you have had time enough for your chat this morning, and your tongues, I think, must be tired. We are going to pass a village, and I must beg you ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... without a trace of the mechanism. A new record—it had cost a dollar and a half and was by a celebrated violinist—was fixed, and a halftone semi-permanent needle selected. Lizzie was to start this after the first storm of knocking, or any preliminary jocularity of Stepan's, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... middle watch on that eventful night, and just after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud sounds of singing and jocularity on the forecastle. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... approval; and the dismal procession set out again; O'Malley enlivening its progress with highly-coloured reminiscences of khud accidents he had known, and with incidental attempts at jocularity that fizzled out like damp fireworks. It was all meant kindly enough. But Desmond was thinking of both man and wife as he had seen them greet one another that morning; and an atmosphere of pseudo-hilarity jarred his nerves like a discord in music. For the man possessed ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... view," said the squire, with a heavy jocularity which did not move the doctor to mirth. "I'm bound to say he confirmed your opinion exactly. But he took a far more serious view of my ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the two sisters assumed an air of indifference. It was Malignon who made his appearance, dressed with greater care than ever, and having a somewhat serious look. He shook hands; but eschewed his customary jocularity, thus returning, in a ceremonious manner, to this house where for some time he had not shown ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... most extreme stage of intimate jocularity is reached when the last sorry pretense of drama is discarded and the dramatic machinery itself becomes the subject of jest. So in the Cas. 1006 the cast is warned: Hanc ex longa longiorem ne faciamus fabulam. In Per. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... her heavy foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea—no idea that we should find—should come upon—We are sorry to intrude." Had her life ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... first, which seemed to shrink from the comparison; and in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and soil. In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old— was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity: ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... possibilities of the Dimensionist idea, made grotesque suggestions. I said: "And when a great many of you have been crowded out of the Dimension and invaded the earth you will do so and so—" something preposterous and ironical. She coldly dissented, and at once the irony appeared as gross as the jocularity of a commercial traveller. Sometimes she signified: "Yes, that is what we shall do;" signified it without speaking—by some gesture perhaps, I hardly know what. There was something impressive—something almost regal—in this manner of hers; it was rather frightening ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... cases—thus establishing a kind of equine martyrdom, in which the poor brute suffered indeed, but without any advantage to the faith of his more brutal persecutors. These various punishments were prescribed with the utmost coolness, often with jocularity, as if the horse under the worst tortures were only getting his deserts, and as if the amount and importance of his laborious services by no means entitled him to any forbearance. Human ingenuity is capable of absolute development in the direction of cruelty; it seems to be the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... is commonly known by the term jocular and comick, is nothing but a turn of expression, an airy phantom, that must be caught at a particular point. As we lose this point, we lose the jocularity, and find nothing but dulness in its place. A lucky sally, which has filled a company with laughter, will have no effect in print, because it is shown single, and separate from the circumstance which gave it force. Many satirical ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... early afternoon the Chancellor visited the Crown Prince. Waiting and watching had made inroads on him, too, but he assumed a sort of heavy jocularity ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it was his custom after having been in any way unamiable to try and make up for it by pleasant remarks and jocularity. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... A sort of sinister jocularity had crept into the tones of the burly feminist. He seized Razumov's arm above the elbow, and gave ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the unsparing use ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... asked Ravenel, with sarcastic jocularity, "if you had an engagement at that time. I thought you business men kept better account of your minutes and seconds ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... poor sinner, Dona Maria," he addressed her feebly, with valiant jocularity. "The days are ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sat in the cockpit smoking, he became down-right obnoxious by excessive jocularity. It can be disgustingly overdone. Believing that his triumph was assured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... This jocularity was in strange contrast to the sombre indifference with which the king of the forest looked down on the speaker. Rounders infringed on the rules laid down by Brinton in giving bits of meat to the beast whenever an opportunity presented itself; but notwithstanding ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Amelia Craven came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his assistance to get married—which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many a dull ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... have not dealt liberally." Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room, without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brought him water, a turkeycock, and bread to eat. Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to see his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally feasted, and entertained with singing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... sublime and the ridiculous are here blended without the step between. Milton descends even to abuse the publisher, Vlac, who had officially signed his name to Morus's preface. The mixture of fanatical choler and grotesque jocularity, in which he rolls forth his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had not written the Clamor, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this time the most popular nobleman in England. He was appointed by the parliament lord high admiral during the civil war. He was much courted by the independent clergy, was shrewd, penetrating and active, and exhibited a singular mixture of pious demeanour with a vein of facetiousness and jocularity. With him was sent Dr. Calamy, the most eminent divine of the period of the Commonwealth, to see (says Baxter [224]) that no fraud was committed, or wrong done to the parties accused. It may well be doubted however whether the presence of this clergyman did not operate unfavourably ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... to inform you that a number of newspaper editors in a mood of mistaken and ill-advised jocularity saw fit at the time to comment upon what was to me a serious and most painful memory. However, I mention this circumstance only in passing, preferring by my dignified silence to relegate the authors of these screeds to the obscurity which their attitude so richly merits. Suffice it ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... worn and haggard with sleeplessness and anxiety, but with the mountaineer's dignified reticence he passively ignored the fact, assuming a detached manner of mild jocularity. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Major Forsyth, with what he flattered himself was a very good assumption of jocularity. It was his idea to treat the matter lightly, as a man of the world naturally would. But his ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... to know," persisted Mr. Bultitude. "Because," he said with a sickly attempt at jocularity which delighted none, "you see, I don't want to be mashed. I'm not a potato. If I understand you aright, you want to fight me because you think me likely to interfere with your claim to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Louis's attempt at jocularity most ill-timed, but I said nothing. It seemed to me an immense time that he was gone, but he declares that it was not more than a minute and a quarter. Then I heard him laugh ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you doing with those ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... who ran the errands, anxiously sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you've brought me back my lady, MacPhail," she said; then added, thawing into something like jocularity, "I shouldn't have looked to you to go running away ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... them addressed in the same fair, feminine hand, youngster," said he, in the easy jocularity of the frontier. "That ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of a diplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believe he had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back by this affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don't know whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know. It would ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact is that the word is derived from ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... coward; if he did, his means were sadly destructive of his end. We see him, after he had expended his Rag-o-muffians, with sword and target in the midst of battle, in perfect possession of himself, and replete with humour and jocularity. He was, I presume, in some immediate personal danger, in danger also of a general defeat; too corpulent for flight; and to be led a prisoner was probably to be led to execution; yet we see him laughing and easy, offering a bottle of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... murder," he replied with careful indifference and no flicker of jocularity. "And it would have to be that, to earn that much money. Two hundred dollars is a fortune; so's one; so's fifty. But I'm kind of particular that way—though the offer is liberal—it is so! I ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... you come, then?" asked Ravenel, with sarcastic jocularity, "if you had an engagement at that time. I thought you business men kept better account of your minutes ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of the mind revealing itself in ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... some jocularity upon the occasion, but I found I was perfectly safe ; indeed my best security is, that my daddy concludes the author to be a man, and all the rest follow ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... colonel's little pail only half full, she exclaimed: "O horrows!" and said it was a lasting disgrace. But Mrs. Du Plessis smiled sweetly with her empurpled lips, and the colonel did not mind the disgrace a particle. They all went home very merry and full of innocent jocularity. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... was a clever, hearing-all sort of a neighbour, said my sermon was greatly thought of, and that I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of this, for she was a flaunty woman, and liked well to give a good-humoured gibe or jeer. However, his grace the Commissioner was very thankful for the discourse, and complimented me on what ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... treated the subject in a broad, free fashion, with a great pretense to openness. Few apprehended the general and essential cautiousness of his disclosures; most people fell easily enough into the notion that so much frank jocularity had no other object than to entertain them; the young man ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George." (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. Lastly, they scanned the phials, trusting ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... upon him as a patriot, and there he made it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table deportment, and ordinary mode of living, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... The forced jocularity of these occasions is apt to be a pitifully wooden business, and I suppose it was a relief to us both when my ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... with a laugh. "Tell Wilson, if you see him, that Peter Dayman and I are expecting him over next week, will you? And I say, Mac, don't kill too many before you get home!" he called in final jocularity. ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a golden harvest from the careless security of those who never thought to see an enemy on that side of the globe. There is something rather revolting, but very indicative of the temper of the age, in the constant reference to the guidance and protection of God, mixed with a quiet jocularity with which "Master Francis Fletcher, preacher in this employment," from whose notes the "World Encompassed," which is a narrative of this voyage, was compiled, speaks of acts very little different from highway robbery, such as would now be held disgraceful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... big planters. I am happy to see the calm and serene faces of three of my friends of the clergy present; will they not take an interest for a fellow-worker in a righteous cause?" The vender smiles, seems inclined to jocularity, to which the gentlemen in black are unwilling to submit. They have not been moving among dealers, and examining a piece of property here and there, with any sinecure motive. They view the vender's remarks as exceedingly offensive, return a look of indignation, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... blandishment, reproof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and, in the end he went away swearing to himself, quite like a man in a novel. He looked more objectionable than ever. I laughed. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... presume, Sir Walter had now adopted. Some, however, to whom I have mentioned Sir Walter's reply, have suggested that I had misunderstood his meaning, and that what he said was not in earnest, but in jocularity and good-humor. This may be true, and certainly is a candid interpretation. As to the ideal beings already mentioned as the subject of his inquiries, my materials were too scanty to afford ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... By a singular reaction in his vigorous temperament, it was about this time that his somber melancholy gave way to a bitter and sarcastic gayety, more in harmony with his nature. From his early youth he had had a taste for jocularity, a mocking turn of spirit, seasoned by that ironical grace of manner peculiar to the great Moscovite nobleman, and resulting from the constant habit of trifling with men and events. His recovery did not, however, restore the agreeable manners which in former times had ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... but (considering the time and occasion) somewhat ill-chosen words of familiarity, the Bailie claimed kindred with Rob Roy's wife. But in this he did himself more harm than good, for his ill-timed jocularity grated on Helen Mac-Gregor's ear, in her present mood of exaltation, and she promptly commanded that the Sassenachs should one and all be bound and thrown into ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... scold a poor sinner, Dona Maria," he addressed her feebly, with valiant jocularity. "The ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... smoother waters of the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst with her he had positively assured her that all ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... most popular nobleman in England. He was appointed by the parliament lord high admiral during the civil war. He was much courted by the independent clergy, was shrewd, penetrating and active, and exhibited a singular mixture of pious demeanour with a vein of facetiousness and jocularity. With him was sent Dr. Calamy, the most eminent divine of the period of the Commonwealth, to see (says Baxter [224]) that no fraud was committed, or wrong done to the parties accused. It may well be doubted however whether the presence ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... ours; but the vowel has a soft pronunciation. The rein-deer are very fond of salt, and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it, may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will go forth with his handful of salt, and take, not his covey of sparrows, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Lily so long that the sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was jocularity: she always entered the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Countess of Urach—or even Duchess of Wirtemberg, save from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... interesting enough to him at any other time, with their seamed bilious complexions of every degree of swarthiness, set off by the touches of colour in their sashes and head coverings, their strange cries and still more uncouth jocularity—but he soon tired of them, and wandered aft, where the steamer-chairs, their usefulness at an end for that voyage, were huddled together dripping and forlorn on the damp red deck. He was still standing by them, idly turning over the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... than mortal man if he had resisted it. He did not,—he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine; and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,— ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as this out of their common rights, and their common sense? Mr. George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9th clause of the Sunset Bill; but if some better remedy be not applied to the distractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pension, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... followed the vice-admiral into the after-cabin, where the latter seated himself on a small sofa, while the others took chairs, in respectful attitudes near him, no familiarity or jocularity on the part of a naval superior ever lessening the distance between him and those who hold subordinate commissions—a fact that legislators would do well to remember, when graduating rank in a service. As soon as all were placed, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rode through the city streets joyfully, merrily, light-heartedly. Conversation, interspersed with laughter and jocularity, literally ran riot, so impatiently did each attempt to relate what was uppermost in his or her mind. The ceremony, the music, the procession, the multitude obtained their due amount of comment, until the arrival of the coach at the door of the Allison home ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... midst of his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in reference to the personal appearance of his deceased parent; perhaps because he was not best pleased to find that Montague and Tigg were one. That gentleman perceived it, and tapping him familiarly on the sleeve, beckoned him to the window. From this moment, Mr Montague's jocularity and flow of spirits ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... illustrated the difference of character between John Westlock and Martin Chuzzlewit, than the manner in which each of the young men contemplated Tom Pinch, after the little rupture just described. There was a certain amount of jocularity in the looks of both, no doubt, but there all resemblance ceased. The old pupil could not do enough to show Tom how cordially he felt towards him, and his friendly regard seemed of a graver and more thoughtful kind than before. The new one, on the other hand, had no impulse but to laugh at the recollection ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... The anxious jocularity of a man who is expending two thousand crowns sat on their host. His eyes turned impatiently towards the door from time to time, seeking one of his guests who kept him waiting. Very soon a stout little person appeared, who was greeted by a complimentary murmur; it was the notary who had ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... nice chap—I think the best of the lot," he began, with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre! There were also two women ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title page? and could it have been possible to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that rough settlement. There was not a man or woman, especially the men, who did not do all in his or her power to make her forget her troubles. No one ever alluded to Mosquito Bend in her presence, and, instead, assumed a rough, cheerful jocularity, which sat as awkwardly on the majority as it well could. For most of them were illiterate, hard-living folk, rendered desperately serious in the struggle ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of his predecessors for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... theatre and ended by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the (at the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, that the cup of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first excitement of her capture of me. She was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... bright complexion, with his full grey eyes and regular teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was indeed worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem was as fine a thing as to win a battle. He was an admirable ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... said that he thought it would be as well to drop the matter and accept the Committee's report. He said with some jocularity that the more one agitated this thing, the worse it was for the agitator. He was not able to deny that he believed Senator Dilworthy to be guilty—but what then? Was it such an extraordinary case? For his part, even allowing the Senator ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time under the stroke of the headsman's axe. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... considered the folly and simplicity of a mere boy, who allowed himself to be caught in the snares of an artful girl, with nothing but a handsome face to recommend her. Felix received all this with good humor, and replied only in a strain of jocularity ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... extreme stage of intimate jocularity is reached when the last sorry pretense of drama is discarded and the dramatic machinery itself becomes the subject of jest. So in the Cas. 1006 the cast is warned: Hanc ex longa longiorem ne faciamus fabulam. In Per. 159-60 Saturio wants ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... nervousness did not permit him to move at all, the anger which prickled the surface of his body and mind was held in check only by an instinct of fear as to what he might do if he moved, and so, with dreadful jocularity, he commenced to speak of himself, his personal character, his sobriety and steadiness—of all those safe negations on which many women place reliance he spoke, and also of certain small vices which he magnified merely for the sake of talking, such as smoking, an odd glass of porter and ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... occasions, he habitually affects a style of arrogance, and dictates rather than persuades. This authoritative and magisterial language he expected to be received as his peculiar mode of jocularity: but he, apparently, flattered his own arrogance by an assumed imperiousness, in which he was ironical only to the resentful, and to the submissive ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to spoil trade, drank from a bottle of colored water when the necessity for refreshment arose. But just now his manner suggested that he had drunk quite as much whisky as the strangers. His spirits rose with theirs, and his jocularity and levity matched theirs, step by step, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... it," I said, with a lame attempt at jocularity; "but to have escaped at all was a miracle. We have much, indeed, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... spirits, flow of spirits; glee, high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had not been so absorbed in the jocularity of his own sensations, he would have observed that his ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... morning out of doors, afoot, in saddle, or adrift in snow, was Lieutenant Lanier. About the first officer Button wished to see was Bob, and about the last was Blake. Yet such was the freakishness of Fate that the first man to hail him, with ill-timed jocularity, was Blake, and the last of his officers whom he was destined that day to set eyes on was Bob Lanier, whom Schuchardt, in answer to the commander's summons, had earlier declared unfit to leave ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... insurance company, however, was jovial, friendly, social, witty, and companionable. At first he was delighted with his new assistant. As time went on, however, the young man's solemnity, his taciturnity, and the quiet, dignified way in which he permitted all attempts at sociability and jocularity to pass over his head, as it were, unnoticed, began to get on his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Coleridge's pages, we seem to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... will be called upon to correct that levity, and peruse me with a more serious air." He informed Newton at the same time: "Thinking myself in a measure obliged to tickle, if I meant to please, I therefore affected a jocularity I did not feel." He also told Newton: "I am merry that I may decoy people into my company." On the other hand, Cowper did not write John Gilpin which is certainly his masterpiece, in the mood of a man ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... for it was his custom after having been in any way unamiable to try and make up for it by pleasant remarks and jocularity. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... misery the old dotard endured, every time his wife entered our apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the change in him, a new wisdom, a sweet jocularity, and, withal, the return of much of his old nature—its rough camaraderie, its boyish liveliness and homely simplicity. For her this was a marvelous relief, and she could only watch him and wonder at the change. He seemed very busy again, and she did not disturb ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... unjust towards every suggestion of genuine fancy. Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people, they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural gift or natural defect,) is so frequent ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... hoping," Mr. Weatherley remarked, with an unwieldy attempt at jocularity, "that I might be asked ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ordinary way of business, have mentioned this fact, but it had given him a resource against a pleasantry he found distasteful. Of course, he knew the event of the morning. Yet he could not say to the gentleman:—"A truce to jocularity. A man was shot dead half a mile off last night, and the body has been ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... next morning hurt and repelled her almost as much as his maudlin jocularity of the night before. She would have preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast," he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand and me tongue twisted—and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Mr Willet adopted this bold course in opposition to one whom he had often entertained, and who had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity, just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young one. Throwing ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and its best affections. And—look you!—this misery passes along the world under the mask of easy indifference, and wears a smiling face, and submits to be rallied by the wit, and assumes itself the air of vulgar jocularity. Oh, this penury that goes well clad, and is warmly housed, and makes a mock of its own anguish—I'd rather die on the wheel, or be starved to death in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... believe that a September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ha! ha!" ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... his own state-room that George Wentworth's jocularity came out at its best. He would grasp John Kenyon by the shoulder and shake that solemn man, over whose face a grim smile generally appeared when he noticed the exuberant ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... neglected part of our history, and when referred to in reminiscences are generally referred to as matters for jocularity. They exercised, however, a serious influence on the minds and feelings of the people, as well as their manners; more so than a hundred subjects with which the historian or the novelist ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... . . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd given ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... as bilious as I look. If you like, I will cut my hair. There is more innocent fun within me than a casual spectator would imagine. You have never seen me frolicsome. Be a good girl — a very good girl — and one day you shall. If you are fond of touch-and-go jocularity — this ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, and luxury would be out of place here, where we only aim at the purely patriarchalorama. If you mean to cut a figure in Paris, my young friend," Vautrin continued, with half-paternal jocularity, "you must have three horses, a tilbury for the mornings, and a closed carriage for the evening; you should spend altogether about nine thousand francs on your stables. You would show yourself unworthy of your destiny if you spent no more than three thousand ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... slight air of triumph, regarding him with a self-satisfied smile and a cunning leer which puzzled him greatly. This strange and unexpected change in Russell, from terror and despair to peace of mind and jocularity, was a puzzle over which Harry racked his brains for some time, but to ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... AVALANCHE, over the signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... refrained from her jocularity, and began to soothe and comfort him, for she was naturally of a winsome way, and prepared a bed for him with her best sheets, the which, she said, were gi'en her in gratus gift frae the Lord Abbot, so that he undressed himself and enjoyed a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... comparison; and in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and soil. In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old— was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity: ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... with gusto a little soliloquy on cider delivered by another friend of ours, as we both stood in a decent ordinary on Fulton Street, going through all the motions of jocularity and cheer. Cider (he said) is our refuge and strength. Cider, he insisted, drawing from his pocket a clipping much tarnished with age, is a drink for men of reason and genteel nurture; a drink for such as desire to drink pleasantly, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... taught us to bear, Though sympathy's soul to a friend drops a tear. Oh dear! what sentimental stuff have I written, Only fit to tear up and play with a kitten. 60 What sober reflections in the midst of this letter! Jocularity sure would have suited much better; But there are exceptions to all common rules, For this is a truth by all boys learned at schools. Now adieu my dear — [Hattie] I'm sure I must tire, 65 For if I do, you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when he has specifically addressed himself to us—us, the infants—and at this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched coat- sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... not smile; he did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... stupid man from ever hearing the sound of his own voice outside the secluded walls of his own home—or should. It ought also to bar the simply witty man; for what is more jarring than a misplaced wit or an ill-timed jocularity? ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... replied the Governor, affecting a jocularity he did not feel, for he knew how true were the words of the Bishop, "we must all do our duty, nevertheless: if France requires impossibilities of us, we must perform them! That is the old spirit! If the skies fall upon our heads, we must, like true Gauls, hold them up on the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... When I began to pull up I found that tobacco helped me; I smoked and chewed both; now I only chew. Well," he said, dropping the pathetic simplicity with which he had spoken, and turning with a fierce jocularity from the shocked and pitying look in Annie's face to Mrs. Munger, "what do you propose to do? Brother Peck's head seems to be pretty level, in ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... it was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face, brought me down to asking with mild jocularity, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... listened to the report of my marriage, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of jocularity upon the mournful occasion. Did you really believe it? If you did, you will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that is wonderful in your creed, for I shall reckon your judgment at least ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... May 29, 1608; in 1610, occurs as Gentleman in Ordinary of the Bedchamber to Prince Henry; and now accompanied the king to Scotland as Lieutenant of his Gentlemen Pensioners. He was recommended to James equally by his sagacity and a peculiar jocularity of humour, and became the king's familiar companion."—Nichols's Royal Progresses, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... his jocularity. Gaston Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more representative of intense preoccupation ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Mr. Pepper had warmed his hands sufficiently to be able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the ci-devant ornament of "The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some such part of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very uncommon instance," said Constance, still unable to look up, and speaking without any of her usual attempt at jocularity. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... soothingly, "that we have not dealt liberally." Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the dismal procession set out again; O'Malley enlivening its progress with highly-coloured reminiscences of khud accidents he had known, and with incidental attempts at jocularity that fizzled out like damp fireworks. It was all meant kindly enough. But Desmond was thinking of both man and wife as he had seen them greet one another that morning; and an atmosphere of pseudo-hilarity jarred his nerves like a discord in music. For the man possessed that mingling of fortitude ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... subject, they came to a wall where an itinerant artist had drawn various representations of animals, ships, &c. After complimenting him on his skill, one of the gentlemen asked him if he could draw an inference. "No," said the artist, "I never saw one." Logic then gave way to jocularity, and a man coming by with a fine team of horses, they stopped him, spoke highly of the condition of his horses, particularly admiring the first. "That horse, carter," said another of the gentlemen, "seems to be a very strong ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... Titelmann was now pre-eminent. He executed his infamous functions throughout Flanders, Douay, and Tournay, the most thriving and populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them o' the coxcombs with a stick and crying reproachfully, Wantons, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one has to take the chair at a meeting which perambulates the streets. Lord Mayor's Day on the 9th—opportunity for letting off "the Mayor the merrier," "L10,000 a Mayor's Nest-egg," &c, &c. Jests about the fog not now popular—the infliction is too serious for jocularity! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... taken up his abode at the Culpeppers', hinted at his "extravagant family," the town refused to take him seriously. And the strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba?" I exclaimed testily to cover my annoyance that my aunt had effected her descent in my absence. "Well, she was expected; the house is hers; what do you want me to do about it?" I ended with affected jocularity. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... burlesque, humor, playfulness, waggishness, drollery, jest, pleasantry, witticism. facetiousness, jocularity, raillery, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Life's Little Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must take some time in getting accustomed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more than the usual reluctance. The day before (it should be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the person of a lodger. Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business, and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the lodger's character. Mr Pitman had been led to understand his guest was not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of an angel. At tea he had ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a moment of jocularity have even so described himself—for he had his human—perhaps I should have said, his weaker—side. Surely he seemed human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country place on the Sound the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Its title suggests unbridled jocularity—and it is in fact full of inimitable fun; but there is a basis of solid thought and sympathy to all the mirth. While replenishing the common stock of Irish stories, Mr Birmingham adjusts our conception ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... took the cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity: "Thank you, Error—thank you. But why didn't you bring it to me, Terebus? Then you'd have earned that kiss I'm going to ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... untidy-looking fellows, are leaving—perhaps for ever. They climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the sisters and children, who give themselves ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... old chieftain threw himself back, burst into a fit of laughing, and declared that all he had said was in joke. The governor suspected, however, that there was a grave meaning at the bottom of this jocularity. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... mysterious a personage to have his name announced in so giddy a scene as the present; but that on the morrow he would furnish me with all the information which I could desire. There was, I thought, in his affected jocularity a real awkwardness which appeared to me unaccountable, and consequently increased my curiosity; its gratification, however, I was obliged to defer. At length, wearied with witnessing amusements in which I could not sympathise, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... shower of reproach, chaff, and gibing; he did not try to excuse himself; he simply opened his book at the old place, and we all shouted the old ode, substituting "Betsa" for "Pyrrha" wherever we could. Still, in spite of our jocularity, we all felt an under-current ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of my person ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... dignity, could not always forbear to show it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort; his jests were endured without resistance or resentment. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a hundred pounds of his friend probably without much ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... "the road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... sure, but it looks like plenty. What's the equation for it?" Beneath his jocularity, Phil felt a tremendous sinking within him. It looked serious, despite the fact that he did not ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
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