Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bodice   Listen
noun
Bodice  n.  
1.
A kind of under waist stiffened with whalebone, etc., worn esp. by women; a corset; stays.
2.
A close-fitting outer waist or vest forming the upper part of a woman's dress, or a portion of it. "Her bodice half way she unlaced."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bodice" Quotes from Famous Books



... the innkeeper retired than the old woman, with remarkable dexterity, rummaged about among the disordered furniture, and seized a certain number of papers, which she hid in her bodice. ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... in truth his attention was diverted from that gentleman ere he had time to fully observe the effect of his entrance. For he had scarcely reached his pew, when Squire and Deacon Timothy Edwards came up the aisle, followed by his family. Desire wore a blue silk skirt and close-fitting bodice, with a white lace kerchief tucked in about her shoulders, and the same blue plumed hat of soft Leghorn straw, in which we have seen her before, the wide brim falling lower on one side than the other, over her dark curls. As she swept up the aisle between the rows of farmers and farmers' ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in with her canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a patched foretopsail rising slowly above the violet water-line. Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with sun-dried bodies. Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman, and who had escaped ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... woman; and because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to, which were neither excessive nor immodest, for their chiefest exception were against her wearing of some whalebone in the bodice and sleeves of her gown, corked shoes and other such like things as the citizens of her rank then used to wear. And although, for offence sake, she and he were willing to reform the fashions of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... and there some superfine baboo's wife floated past in her close palanquin, or sat with her children on the flat roof of her house, or peeped through her narrow windows into the street, arrayed in fancy bodice and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... these, there were diamonds from the Queen of Spain and from the Empress of Russia and sundry grand duchesses. No lady violinist ever appeared before an American audience more gorgeously arrayed. "Fastened all over the bodice of her soft white woollen gown she wore these sparkling jewels, and in her hair were two or three diamond stars," said the account in Dwight's Journal of Music. Yet with all this the criticisms of her playing were somewhat lukewarm. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... kerchief fastened round her waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair, fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... attractive in the line of female loveliness. She was certainly a model of rustic beauty—I had rarely seen her equal in any country. Nothing could be more lithe and graceful than her form, which was advantageously set off by a tight bodice and a very scanty petticoat. A pair of red woolen stockings conspicuously displayed the fine contour of her—ankles I suppose is the conventional expression, though I mean a great deal more than that. As she ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... partly hidden behind a large easel, I watched it for awhile in silence. Above a heavily flounced blue skirt, which fell in creases on the floor and trailed a couple of yards or so behind, it wore a black low-cut sleeveless bodice—much too big for it—of the fashion early Victorian. A good deal of dark-brown hair, fastened up by hair-pins that stuck out in all directions like quills upon a porcupine, suggesting collapse with every movement, was ornamented by three enormous green feathers, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... of bright golden-green grosgrain silk trimmed with crepe leaves a shade deeper. The pointed bodice displayed her shoulders in a fashion still beloved of royal ladies, and her soft golden-brown hair was dressed in a high chignon with a long curl descending over the left side of her bust. A few still clung to the low chignon, others had adopted a fashion set by the Empress Eugenie and wore ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... called by its ancient name of "fourreau," so tightly was she sheathed within it, after the fashion of the eighteenth century. The material—a brown silk, with very fine and multiplied green lines—seemed also of that period. The bodice, which was one with the skirt, was partly hidden beneath a mantle of poult-de-soie edged with black lace, and fastened on the bosom by a brooch enclosing a miniature. Her feet, in black velvet boots, rested ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... drawing-room, leaning on the arm of Captain Douglas, I will try describe her as nearly as possible:—A white satin robe with court train, bordered with the purest lace, festooned with pearls, over a blue satin petticoat, formed a lovely costume, with bodice of white satin, showing the faultless waist of the wearer; white satin slippers, ornamented with pearls, encased the tiny feet of Lady Rosamond. She was, indeed, worthy the name she bore—a type of her lovely but unfortunate ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... light of a lamp burning before an image of the Virgin, he distinctly made out the face, as well as the strange dress. It was an old woman of the uttermost hideousness, which struck the eye the more from her being grotesquely clad in a scarlet bodice embroidered with gold. Emilius fancied at first it must be some extravagant mask that had lost its way: but the bright light soon convinced him that the old brown wrinkled face was one of Nature's ploughing, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... Meitje Klenck. The children had sometimes been granted rare glimpses of it as it lay in state in the old oaken chest. Faded and threadbare as it was, it was gorgeous in their eyes, with its white linen tucker, now gathered to her plump throat and vanishing beneath the trim bodice of blue homespun, and its reddish-brown skirt bordered with black. The knitted woolen mitts and the dainty cap showing her hair, which generally was hidden, made her seem almost like a princess to Gretel, while ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... dress. She was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her "Come in," and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, Lizzie felt that Vincent Deering's first letter—the letter from the train—had slipped from her loosened bodice ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... palm to palm between her knees, glancing at Dominic Iglesias now and again sideways as she spoke. The bodice of her dress, cut slightly en coeur, showed the nape of her neck, and the whole of her throat, which was smooth and rounded though rather long. Her make altogether was that not uncommon to London girls of the lower middle- class: small-boned and possibly anaemic, but prettily moulded, and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... both blond and brunette, which, however, one cannot so easily distinguish, owing to the richly worked kerchiefs under which their hair is hidden. Their entire costume is snow-white, even to the fine sheepskin bodice worn by each." ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... blue-black of her hair; the soft tones of the velvet lost in the shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the japonica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips—red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through. The other side of her beautiful self—the side that lay hidden under her soft lashes ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... told the curate all that had passed between him and them, not omitting what Sancho had been so silent about. Finally the landlady dressed up the curate in a style that left nothing to be desired; she put on him a cloth petticoat with black velvet stripes a palm broad, all slashed, and a bodice of green velvet set off by a binding of white satin, which as well as the petticoat must have been made in the time of king Wamba. The curate would not let them hood him, but put on his head a little quilted linen ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... came, Jean Valjean went out; Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the most becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, "a trifle indecent." It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual. She made her toilet thus without knowing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... down to the washing trough. She pretends not to see me.... I will steal behind the elder hedge. Felicie! Felicie! I have a piece of a 77 in my kidneys. I like her best in her blue bodice. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... tragi-comic combinations. I remember a group of a man in the dress of an Antwerp burgher sitting on a three-legged stool, with his head on the knee of a discreet-looking woman in a long-waisted, plain-skirted gown, with a high square bodice closed by a plaited neckerchief, her hair drawn tightly back under a close round cap, her pocket hanging from her girdle on one side, and on the other a small array of housewifery implements, among others a pair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... instinctively lifted her hands to protect her headdress. Then all went quickly, the silence only broken by an occasional whispered word and by the rustle of silk, the long soft sound of the lacing as Inez drew it through the eyelets of the bodice, the light tapping of her hands upon the folds and gatherings of the skirt and on the puffed velvet on the shoulders ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... lanes, or by the brook, or at the garden-palings, or about Castlewood: it was, "Lord, Mr. Henry!" and "how do you do, Nancy?" many and many a time in the week. 'Tis surprising the magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now, in a red bodice and buxom purple cheeks and a canvas petticoat; and that I devised schemes, and set traps, and made speeches in my heart, which I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress, who knew nothing beyond milking a cow, and opened her black eyes ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... or accidental distortion, his vital functions were so much disordered that his life was a long disease... When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... shift, chemise; night gown, negligee, dressing gown, night shirt; bedgown^, sac de nuit [Fr.]. underclothes [underclothing], underpants, undershirt; slip [for women], brassiere, corset, stays, corsage, corset, corselet, bodice, girdle &c (circle) 247; stomacher; petticoat, panties; under waistcoat; jock [for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth^; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; cummerbund, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... so envied. Her hair was loosely knotted at the back, and on her forehead were straying curls which were seldom tolerated in the severity of her usual neatness. She wore a collar of pearls, and her bodice was ornamented with two sunbursts ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without making ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... sole child of its richest farmer, but for the bright blonde hair that covered her shoulders with its soft abundance and hung to her waist. Her father would not have it cut or braided or even covered save by such a little embroidered cap as she wore now. Her scarlet bodice, and blue-black skirt bordered with bright woven bands, were of the finest wool; the full-sleeved white linen under-dress had been spun and woven and embroidered by skilful and loving fingers. Nikolina had lost the roof from over ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... a salad-green bodice on her elder daughter. That young woman's efforts to see her own spine, where her mother was distributing pins with solemn intentness, had dyed her face a somewhat unnatural red, but the hands that lay upon her downy arms were much whiter than those that hovered about her back. A dining-table, bearing ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... and curled, her eyes blue-gray and smiling, her face featly fashioned, the nose high and fairly set, the lips more red than cherry or rose in time of summer, her teeth white and small; and her breasts so firm that they bore up the folds of her bodice as they had been two walnuts; so slim was she in the waist that your two hands might have clipt her; and the daisy flowers that brake beneath her as she went tiptoe, and that bent above her instep, seemed black against her feet and ankles, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... the higher type, and such as is seldom found among the lower or even middle classes. And yet you instinctively felt that it belonged to the latter, notwithstanding the richness of the dress, from the pearl-embroidered cap set jauntily on the reddish golden hair to the velvet bodice and the satin peasant waist. The hands, small and dimpled like those of a child, were clasped around a prayer-book and a bunch of wild flowers which had evidently just been gathered. It was a marvelously beautiful face, pure and sweet as ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... thick silk, which were so full of plaits that they stood out stiff, like the hooped petticoats of our good old times. These trousers are from twenty to five and twenty yards wide, and reach down to the ankle. The upper part of the body was covered as far as the hips by a bodice, which, however, did not fit close to the body. The sleeves were long and narrow. The corset resembled that of the time of the hooped petticoats; it was made of thick silk, richly and tastefully embroidered ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... SOL. Didst ever see so fair a skin? Her bodice Should still be loosened. Bring the Moorish water, Griselda, you. They are the longest lashes! They hang upon her cheek. Doctor, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... my jewels you want to feel, Anne?" she said, as the old hands tremblingly passed over her bodice. "I have ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... her cloak fallen upon the grass. Howat could see her face beneath hair faintly powdered with silver dust and the ruffled patch of white tied pertly under her chin. Her smoothly turning shoulders, filmed in lawn, and low bodice crowned an extravagant circumference of ruffled silk and rosettes. Against the night of the Province, the invisible but felt presence of immutable hills, she was like a puppet, a grotesque figure of comedy. He regarded ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... exquisitely beautiful, dressed in a plain grey bodice and kirtle, with a black band round her slim waist and a soft white kerchief folded across her bosom. Beneath the tiny, white cap her golden hair appeared in dainty, curly profusion; her child-like, oval face was very white, but otherwise ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... with her clothes, and whirled in astride over two horses with neither saddle nor bridle, guiding them and keeping them together by the pressure of her feet. She had full skirts, to her knees, of white satin, and pearl-coloured silk stockings. Her satin bodice was cut heart-shaped and there was a high jewelled band round her long throat. Her hair hung down in a thick plait, tied with ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... old cream lace. The material of a woman's dress had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk, but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy white, with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her beautiful white shoulders, and the great mass of dark hair rising in graceful curves from her full round neck, heightened her beauty to an ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... complexion was as pure, her cheeks as rosy, her neck as fresh and fair, as if she had that morning issued from some peaceful home. Her costume, though singular and fantastic, suited her admirably. It was composed of a tight, long-waisted bodice in cloth of gold, trimmed with great bunches of scarlet ribbon, the ends of which streamed over her naked arms, and a short petticoat of scarlet velvet, ornamented with golden beads and spangles. This petticoat reached half way down a leg, at once trim and strong, in a white silk ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... yellow facings, Venetian windows, projection lamps, and high seat for footmen and coachman —there to take a house for the winter season—there to give and to be given balls, where she trod the minuet, stiff in blue brocade, her white shoulders rising out of a bodice hung with gems, her beautiful head bearing aloft its tower of long white feathers. Yet with most of her life passed at the great lonely country-house by the bright river: qazing wistfully out of the deep-mullioned windows of diamond panes; flitting up and down the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... dinner was the delicate, battered-looking actress, in a Royal fringe and a tight bodice with short sleeves, who had once been a celebrity, though no-one remembered for what. Miss Myra Mooney, formerly a beauty, had known her days of success. She had been the supreme performer of ladylike parts. She had been known as the very quintessence of refinement. It was assumed ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... long time von Briest really held fast to this view with remarkable tenacity. But after the second rehearsal, at which Kaethchen was half in costume, wearing a tight-fitting velvet bodice, he was so carried away as to remark: "Kaethchen lies there beautifully," which turn was pretty much the equivalent of a surrender, or at least prepared the way for one. That all these things were kept secret from Effi goes without saying. With more curiosity on her part, however, it would have ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that no breath of air could enter your ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she—the naughty baggage—little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Richmond in the general assembly, has introduced an amendment to the anti-nuisance, or "red light," measure, making it unlawful for any woman to wear a skirt the length of which is more than four inches from the ground, a bodice or shirt waist showing more than three inches of neck, or clothes of transparent texture. Delegate Myers said he wished ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... back, laid her hand lightly on the young man's arm, and allowed him to tuck the watch into her bodice and fasten the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... to march through the streets. Early in the morning, Billy was led into the sawdust ring, and a peculiar saddle like a little platform was strapped to his back. This the monkey was to dance on, dressed as a ballet girl, with yellow, spangled skirts, a satin bodice and a blue cap with a feather in it ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... the serious expression of the little virgins of Filippo Lippi. Her complexion was a little muddy, her hair was light brown, always untidy, and done up in a slovenly chignon. She was slight of figure, small-boned. And her movements were lazy. Dressed carelessly—a gaping bodice, buttons missing, ugly, worn shoes, always looking a little slovenly—she charmed by her grace and youth, her gentleness, her instinctively coaxing ways. When she appeared to take the air at the door ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... flocked on her path. Bjarne shook his head at her, and often had harsh words upon his lips, when he saw her braiding field-flowers into her yellow tresses or clasping the shining brooches to her bodice; but a look of hers or a smile would completely disarm him. She had a merry way of doing things which made it all seem like play; but work went rapidly from her hands, while her ringing laughter echoed through the house, and her sunny presence ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... exchange for her labor. The luxuries of life on the island were air and water, and the glories of evening and morning. People who could buy them got such gorgeous clothes as were brought by the Company. But usually Jenieve felt happy enough when she put on her best red homespun bodice and petticoat for mass or to go to dances. She did wish for shoes. The ladies at the fort had shoes, with heels which clicked when they danced. Jenieve could dance better, but she always felt their eyes on her moccasins, and came to regard ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... John Duddlestone, sir, only a bodice-maker, and I pray you not to take it amiss if I ask you and the gentleman who is with, you, to come to my humble home, where ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... stars shone out above the doubtful green Of her bodice, in the green sky overhead; Pale in the green sky were the stars I ween, Because the moon shone like a star ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... the gorgeousness of her party of young people, and when Patty gave her a sprig of seaweed to tuck in her bodice, she felt as if she belonged to ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... 'most killed me yesterday—they always do break out bad about Easter. My pleasure club," she explained, turning to me—"my pleasure club, 'The Moonlight Maids,' give a ball to-night." Which fact likewise explained the curl-papers as well as the slattern shirt-waist, donned to save the evening bodice worn to the factory that morning and now tucked away in a big box ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... Rusha, in her tight round cap, and stout brown petticoat with the homespun apron over it; the other was like a fairy by her side; slight and tiny, dressed in something of mixed threads of white and crimson that shone in the sun, with a velvet bodice, a green ribbon over it, and a gem over the shoulder that flashed in the sun, a tiny scarlet hood from which such a quantity of dark locks streamed as to give something the effect of a goldfinch's crown, and the face was a brilliant little brown one, with glowing cheeks, pretty little white ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own petticoat. Really—her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case... "And you don't wear stays, do you?" She touched Beryl's waist, and Beryl sprang away with a small affected cry. Then "Never!" she ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... Valentina Mihailovna, at her wonderful eyes, her slightly painted lips, at her white hands, the parted fingers adorned with rings, which the elegant lady so energetically pressed against the bodice ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About her neck she had fastened a string of garnets. She had loaded her fingers with old-fashioned rings, of which the very dullness made me wince to see them employed in this ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... drove round the lawn and drew up outside the windows. Hortense sprang out and helped an old woman to alight, dressed in a fluted linen cap, a black velvet bodice and a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... suspiciously from the top of the gate, as though he thought I was going to laugh at him like the other boys and girls. Then he dropped into the garden on the inside and immediately started taking off his clothes. He tore the straw hat in two and threw it down into the road. Then he took off his bodice and skirt, jumped on them savagely and began kicking them ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... of the proprietor, came in to entertain me presently, dressed in a bodice of blue pina, with the wide sleeves newly starched and ironed, and with her hair unbound. She sat down opposite me in a rocking-chair, shook off her slippers on the floor, and curling her toes around the rung, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... very beautiful girl of seventeen or eighteen, although already possessing the ripened charms of a woman. She was dressed in white, with a low bodice, her luxuriant golden hair, of a rare sheen and fineness, falling upon beautifully moulded shoulders. The complexion was of a purity that needed the faint tinge of pink in the cheeks to relieve ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... herself came in and the three dined together, a statuesque maid in a yellow bodice and a purple skirt waiting on them. Agata's "Si?" was like a flute-note, and the two women loved to see her moving about their rooms. It was like having Hebe wait ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... any inclination to do so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and coiffure, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... laid upon white silk. The bodice was silver fish- scales, and she shimmered like a moonbeam. She laid her hand on her dancer's shoulder, moving forward with a motion that permeated her whole body. A silver shoe ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... pretty picture, the little jet-black mare, and the mistress with her scarlet paragon bodice, even if the latter was entirely too pronounced for the taste of the great majority of the inhabitants, young and old, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... Stavers in her furbelows, Just as her cuckoo-clock was striking nine. Above her head, resplendent on the sign, The portrait of the Earl of Halifax, In scarlet coat and periwig of flax, Surveyed at leisure all her varied charms, Her cap, her bodice, her white folded arms, And half resolved, though he was past his prime, And rather damaged by the lapse of time, To fall down at her feet and to declare The passion that had driven him to despair. For from his lofty station he had seen Stavers, her husband, dressed in bottle-green, Drive his new ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... a yellow skirt, with a red bodice embroidered in gold; a little hat studded with diamonds and a beauty spot on the left temple. She wished me to give her the letter I found, and I sold it to her ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... very well. It was cut like a French sac—a fashion that had first come in about ten years before, and still lasted; and was a little lower at the throat than many that she wore. It was of a brownish kind of yellow, of which I do not know the name, and had white lace to it, and silver lace on the bodice. She was sunburnt again, but not too much, as I had first seen her; and her blue eyes looked very bright in her face; and she wore a ring on either hand, as she usually did in the evening, and had her little pearls round her neck. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... the naiques or leaders, with their massive necklaces of gold, with the image of the pitriswar (manes) depending therefrom, gave the whole an air of opulence and dignity. The females were uniformly attired in a skirt of dark-brown camlet, having a bodice of light-coloured stuff, with gold ornaments worked into their fine black hair; and all had the favourite churis or rings of hathidant (elephant's tooth) covering the arm from the wrist to the elbow, and even above it." A little later, referring to the same Charan community, Colonel ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... other young women, who joined their hands and danced merrily forward, making gestures of obeisance to the strangers. They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress. Yet Eurylochus fancied that one of them had sea-green hair, and that the close-fitting bodice of a second looked like the bark of a tree, and that both the others had something odd in their aspect, although he could not quite determine what it was, in the little while that he ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... feet, as I stepped to the top, lay a group of three: one a Norway peasant-girl in skirt of olive-green, scarlet stomacher, embroidered bodice, Scotch bonnet trimmed with silver lace, and big silver shoe-buckles; the second was an old Norway man in knee-breeches, and eighteenth-century small-clothes, and red worsted cap; and the third was, I decided, an old Jew of the Polish Pale, in gaberdine ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... just my ambition. What a pity it's looking backward instead of forward. But I would love to live in a great stone castle, all my own, with a moat and drawbridge and outriders, and go around in a damask gown with a pointed bodice and big puffy sleeves and a ruff and a little cap with pearls on it, and a bunch of keys jingling ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... heavy, iron-bound oak chest, which she permitted no one but herself to open. Here she treasured all the things she had inherited from her mother, and of these she was especially careful. Here lay a couple of old-time peasant dresses, of red homespun cloth, with short bodice and plaited shirt, and a pearl-bedecked breast pin. There were starched white-linen head-dresses, and heavy silver ornaments and chains. Folks don't care to go about dressed like that in these days, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... clothed only in bodice and leather jacket and a rather short ochre-colored skirt that blew in the gaining wind and showed the outline of her lithe young figure. Her long black hair billowed and galloped ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... was wearing the costume of her maid; Faquita was closely veiled and habited like her mistress; but it was characteristic that, while Faquita appeared awkward and over-dressed in her borrowed plumes, Maruja's short saya and trim bodice, with the striped shawl that hid her fair head, looked infinitely more coquettish and bewitching than on ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... shadow, part of the outline, and expressing its beauty. And then there are the marvels of the dress to consider: the perfect and spontaneous creation of the glitter of the long silk arms, and the muslin of the wrists, soft as foliage, and then the hardness of the bodice stitched with jewellery and set so romantically on ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... think so, the cut of the skirt is lovely, but I am not altogether satisfied with the severe bodice. I want you to wear this fichu of mine, ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... downstairs in the short petticoats, trimmed bodice, and bright kerchief pinned across the bosom, and two rows of large blue beads round his neck, his disguise was perfect, save as to his head. This Magdalene again arranged for him. "Yes, you will do very well now," she said, surveying him critically. "I have bought a basket, too, full of eggs; and ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his coffee. Then came a zither solo—that abominable instrument of plucked wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the man finished. A stout soprano in a velvet bodice, her arms bare and brawny, the arms of a lass accustomed to ploughing and digging potatoes, sang something about turtle doves. She was odious. Odious, too, was her companion, in a duo through which they screamed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... out of my arms, she sat with the unfastened bodice of her gown slipping away from her shoulders, and her face bent over the pearl necklace which she was running back and forth ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... the young man vaguely, sinking back in his chair with his arms folded. He looked at Mrs. Luna with intelligent incredulity. She was sufficiently pretty; her hair was in clusters of curls, like bunches of grapes; her tight bodice seemed to crack with her vivacity; and from beneath the stiff little plaits of her petticoat a small fat foot protruded, resting upon a stilted heel. She was attractive and impertinent, especially the latter. He seemed to think it was a great pity, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with magnificent fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bordered with a gimp fit to trim a Portuguese princess' bodice. The material was silk brought from Canton, on which Chinese patience had painted Oriental birds with a perfection only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the Missal of Charles V., the pride of the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... slackened, checked altogether. This was not unexpected, for midway the rockets fastened about her waist, and upon her crown were to be discharged. The manner in which these latter went off brought shrieks and groans from the crowd below. They fizzed up into Columbia's face, they burned against her bodice, they struck her arms. "Oh! oh! Poor soul! she'll have her eyes put out! She'll be killed!" cried a woman's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... state for hours, for the sole benefit of posterity, unless Sam Winnington was to reap a passing advantage by the process. Clarissa in her brocade, with the stiff body and the skirt standing on end, her neckerchief drawn through the straps of her bodice, her bouquet pinned, "French fashion," on her side; surely that picture was a masterpiece. So speaking was the copy of her deep brown hair, her soft, proud cheek, the wave of her ripe red lips, that a tame white pigeon, accustomed to sit ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... just been putting the child to sleep and she stood up as they came in, hastily fastening the bodice of her dress ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... "But I have no money, monsieur." If you have no money, you have friends; a friend has given you your new pillow, you know, and another friend, perhaps, may give you a room to live in." Her eyelids drooped, her color came and went quickly, I detected beneath her bodice the convulsive movement of her heart. The agitation she betrayed communicated itself to me; I rose from my chair and leaned against the window-sill, so that my face might be no longer on a level with her eyes. "I understand you, monsieur!" she cried, and immediately burst into tears. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... from Paris, entered the salon, with his usual unceremoniousness, and beheld an odd spectacle. The prim chairs had been piled on the couch by the wall, the table pushed into a corner, and on the vacant space, Elodie, in her old dancer's practising kit, bodice and knickerbockers, once loose but now skin tight to grotesqueness, and Andrew in under vest and old grey flannels, were perspiringly engaged with pith balls in the elementary art of the juggler. Elodie, on beholding him, clutched a bursting corsage with both hands, uttered ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... of honor had great difficulty to keep from bursting out laughing at the flight of the cross old prime minister; and the Queen pretended to arrange her bodice, made of the gossamer wing of the katydid, to hide a smile; but now, reclining on her throne, and gracefully fanning herself with her right wing, she indulged in a pleasant chat with her favorites, ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... or two circumstances which led me to suspect that the spy I pursued was a female. As the mustang sprung over the zequia, the flowing skirt of the manga was puffed upward, and hung for some moments spread out in the air. A velvet bodice beneath, a tunic-like skirt, the tournure of the form, all impressed me as singular for a cavallero, however rich and young. The limbs I could not see, as the goat-skin armas-de-agua were drawn over them; but I caught a glimpse of a gold spur, and a heel of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... for the table d'hote. What a grand occasion that was to us! I was rather frightened, but Lilly actually seemed to grow taller as she put on her new dress. She had chosen the suit herself, and while the skirt was black silk, the bodice was deep crimson laced in the back. Her face rose from it like a lily, pure and pale. I looked at her with admiration and despair, for in my nervousness I felt that my face was the color of an Indian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... as nine-pins. Lawk! But her nose was crooked and thin, and half the whites o' her eyes was open. She used to stand, dressed as she was, gigglin' and dribblin' before the lookin'-glass, wi' a fan in her hand and a big nosegay in her bodice. Her wrinkled little hands was stretched down by her sides, and such long nails, all cut into points, I never sid in my days. Could it even a bin the fashion for grit fowk to ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... wouldn't like them not to be full and 'andsome. Just another two yards!" There was nothing else for it, so I promised to go up to town next morning (I couldn't possibly go that day), and impressed upon the wretch to finish the bodice first,—as, if necessary, we could do with less trimming on the skirt. My dear, the worst is still to come! The shop was sold out of the shade of voile, and could not get it again, and when I went back to Miss Green, she had finished the skirt, and had nothing left for sleeves! ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... the devil that Mother Geske should wear an Adrienne; still, he didn't make any headway, because mistress is an old-fashioned God-fearing woman, who had rather lay down her life than part with her lapelled bodice. He is always about to bring forth something or other, the devil knows what. So if you wish to succeed in your wooing, you had better take ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... word "medieval" (in Mrs. Lora Rewbush's rich phrase) which had inspired the idea for a last conspicuous usefulness; at all events, the bodice of that once salmon dress, somewhat modified and moderated, now took a position, for its farewell appearance in society, upon the back, breast, and arms of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... the maiden grows, Her bodice seems too tight— That I'm a man the maiden knows, Her bodice ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... when her eyes opened, and waking with a start, she got up in sudden confusion. Mrs. Darnell went back to her room and dressed slowly while her husband still slept, and it was only at the last moment, as she fastened her cherry-coloured bodice, that she roused him, telling him that the bacon would be overdone unless he hurried ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... over the bridge carrying a load of green grass on her back. What would she say if he asked her to stop for a moment that he might sketch her pretty costume? Her head-dress was a scarlet handkerchief, tied behind: she wore a tight-fitting bodice of cream-white flannel and petticoats of gray flannel, while she had a waistbelt and pouch of brilliant blue. Did she know of these harmonies of color or of the picturesqueness of her appearance as she came across the bridge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... short skirt of dull blue linen could not hide the lines of the young limbs; beneath the thin, white, sleeveless bodice showed the tint of the flesh, the rise and fall of the bosom. The bare feet trod the grass lightly and firmly; the brown eyes looked from under the dogwood chaplet in a gaze that was serious, innocent, and unashamed. To Audrey they were only people out of a fairy tale,—all ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... tall and slim and supple, her perfect body clad in a deep black gown, the hem and bosom of which were embroidered with celandines, and it had a golden belt and was lined with gold, as he could see when the loose sleeves fell open on her round and slender arms; and the bodice of the gown hung a little away from her stooping body, and was embroidered inside, as well as outside, with celandines, which made reflections on her white neck, as they will on a pure pool where they ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... exchanged a despairing look with Cyril. Anthea detached a pin from her waistband, a pin whose withdrawal left a gaping chasm between skirt and bodice, and handed it furtively to Robert - with a grimace of the darkest and deepest meaning. Robert slipped away to the road. There, sure enough, stood a bicycle - a beautiful new free-wheel. Of course Robert understood at once that if the Lamb was grown up he MUST have a bicycle. This had ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... Long skirt of dark blue, made very full around the bottom. This skirt is patched with squares of dark red and striped goods. Large blue gingham apron edged with stripes of dark red. White waist. Blue bodice of same material as skirt. Small white cap fitting close to head in back, but turned back in front with points over each ear. Face round and rosy. If the wooden shoes are not easily obtained, fair substitutes may be made by covering ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... and then exclaimed: "Oh, yes—I have it; grandma has a blue satin bodice which she wore when she was a young lady. She once gave me a part of the back for my doll's dress. She won't care if I cut up the rest ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... was now fully refreshed and rested from the journey, and she came forward to greet her guest in her tunic, without her mantle, a cloud of soft white Indian gauze loosely pinned upon her black hair and half covering her neck. Her bodice-like belt was of scarlet and gold, and from one side there hung a rich-hilted knife of Indian steel in a jewelled sheath. The long sleeves of her tunic were drawn upon her arms into hundreds of minute folds, and where the delicate stuff hung in an oblong lappet over her ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... promising fragments was a large, weary-looking person, with no lack of powdered shoulder above her pink bodice and a profusion of "undulated" hair of so decided a blond that it might have been suspected that the decision had lain with ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington

... female devil. If it be considered that this rule is obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs Proudie. But she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible. Mrs Quiverful, however, did gain access, and Mrs Proudie proved herself a woman. Whether it was the fourteen children with their probable bare ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... had begun to chill her; a loose white downy wrap that she had thrown over her shoulders hung negligently to one side, leaving one round white arm bare, her head rested languidly back on the crimson cushions of her chair, the little fringes of pearls that nestled at her bosom on her low bodice, shivered and trembled as she breathed. The gas burned very low within, and with its subdued light only helped to make Honor still more like a spectre than she was. Guy, standing quite close to the panes, could see the gray pallor that had come over her agitated ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... rambling tale of a hard-hearted dressmaker who, having had a new frock back for alteration, had taken upon herself to return the skirt, without the bodice, with an intimation that she was retaining the delayed portion until her long account was settled. Hence Mrs. Vivian found herself with what she called a most important engagement, without the equally important new frock to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... me some verses, Mr. Appleton," she said, as the poet moved away. "I have them safe" (and she touched her bodice), "but I haven't had a quiet ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and rubies. Her hair is dressed, following the mental habit of madame, in the Greek style, and abundantly trimmed with roses and gems and bits of silver gauze. There is a little crown upon the top of madame's coiffure. Her bodice, cut sufficiently low, is seen to be of light silken weave. From her hair depends a veil of light gauze covered with gold spangles, and it is secured upon the left side by a hand's grasp of pink and white feathers, surmounted by a magnificent heron plume of long and silken ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... colors—amber and white—a dress of rich amber brocade, trimmed with white lace; the queenly head was circled with diamonds; jewels like fire gleamed on the white breast; there was a cluster of choice flowers in her bodice. He had seen her hitherto as a girl; now he was to see her as the high-bred hostess, the mistress of a ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... seen a more dainty figure. Her heavily flounced white skirt stopped short just above her white-stockinged ankles and little feet, hidden in white satin, low-quartered slippers. Her black silk, shell-like jacket half clasped her stayless bust clad in an under-bodice of soft muslin that faintly outlined a contour which struck him as already womanly. A black lace veil which had protected her head, she had on entering slipped down to her shoulders with a graceful gesture, leaving one end of it pinned to her hair by a rose ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Ponta do Sol, the only remarkable site on the trip, famous for bodice-making and infamous for elephantiasis. Here a huge column of curiously contorted basalt has been connected by a solid high-arched causeway with the cliff, which is equally remarkable, showing a central boss of stone with lines radiating ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... gold that often gave the eyes a dazzling appearance. Her ear was like a bit of pinkish shell or a half crumpled rose leaf. And where her chin melted into her neck, and the neck sloped to the shoulder, there were exquisite lines. After the fashion of the day her bodice was cut square, and the sleeves had a puff at the shoulder and a pretty bow that had done duty in various places before. He did not understand that it was beauty that moved him so, for he had always been deeply sympathetic over the loss of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... tongue was loose, and she wept freely for no apparent reason. According to herself, she had stopped Lucy to demand back from Mr. Hope through the girl certain articles of attire which had been borrowed for artistic purposes. These, consisting of a shawl and a skirt and a bodice, were of extraordinary value, and Mrs. Bolton wanted them back or their equivalent in value. She mentioned that she would prefer ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... the best; but now the very earth, perhaps, will never receive her. Oh yes, anything you like—the body trimmed with jet, if you wish it, and let me see, a gauze bodice, goffered, fastened to the throat. That is all, I think; the sleeves confined at the wrist just enough not to expose the arm, and yet ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... toilet. A nurse had brought her back the clothes she wore when she entered the hospital. She slipped on a poor muslin skirt, laced her bodice, buttoned her boots and set her curls straight; she ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... features that Dorothy thought she had never seen so sweet and adorable a creature in all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty lace-like traceries trimmed the bodice and sleeves. Her flesh was fine and smooth as polished ivory, and her poise expressed both ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... them. So says Mireio; but Vincen adds that this is only true if the young escape before they are put into a cage. "Jesu moun Dieu! take care," cries the young girl, "catch them carefully, for this concerns us." So Vincen gets the young birds, and Mireio puts them carefully into her bodice; but they dig and scratch, and must be transferred to Vincen's cap; and then the branch breaks, and the two fall together in close embrace upon the soft grass. The ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... stairway, accompanied by three instruments, sang the Elsa's Dream Song. The wedding party came downstairs as the orchestra played Wagner's Wedding March. The bride was dressed in duchess satin of soft ivory tone, the bodice high and long sleeves, with trimming of jewelled point lace. The bridesmaids wore pale yellow cloth, with reveres and cuffs of daffodil yellow satin and white Venetian point. Mrs. Harris wore a gown of heliotrope brocaded silk, trimmed with ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... in a silk petticoat of almost lemon yellow and an azure-colored silk bodice that left her arms and shoulders bare to the light that played on them from three small oil lamps above her. Her feet and ankles were also bare, except for the matting sandals into which her toes were thrust. On one thin arm glimmered an extraordinarily heavy bracelet ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... with her women in assorting a huge basket of freshly laundered household linen. Not a strand of silver was visible in her jet black hair, adorned with a large tortoise-shell comb and a single Castilian rose. Her gay, low-necked, short sleeved bodice, exposing her shapely neck and arms, harmonized well with her short, black silken saya which rustled with every movement she made and from beneath which protruded a small pair of high instepped feet encased in black slippers ornamented ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... time he mentioned a name the women leaned to right and left and smiled. I never even thought of praying. I looked at Martine, who was on her knees. Her dark curls had got out from under her embroidered cap. Her shoulders were broad, and her white bodice was fastened at the waist with a black ribbon. The whole of her made one think of something fresh and new, and yet the Mother Superior had told me that shepherdesses were dirty. I thought of Martine and how smart she always looked in her short striped ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... the sun sprinkles in across the floor. She was dressed in black, not a funeral black, but one of those fluffy things that make crepe look like royal purple. She had a rose, a long-stemmed rose, in her bodice, and one of those Spanish lace things over her hair. I can see her now,—almost reach out and touch her. I went in and took a table not far away and ordered a drink. Then I watched her out of the corner ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... us as a study of bygone fashions, and is painted with exquisite care for detail. The pointed bodice is as stiff as a coat of mail, like that so long in vogue at the court of Spain. Perhaps the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands may have brought the corset with it. Certainly it is not conducive to an easy carriage; only a graceful figure like this ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... "Her bodice was a pretty sight to see; Ye who would know its colour,—be a thief Of the rose's muffled bud from off the tree; And for your knowledge, strip it leaf by leaf Spite of your own remorse or Flora's grief, Till ye have come unto its heart's pale hue; The last, last leaf, which is the queen,—the ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... entered the living-room, an exquisite bit of Venetian lace filled in the V at the back of the bodice; the softest white maline edged the front, and when, she raised her train a lace petticoat which any girl would have pronounced "too sweet for words" floated like ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... then and looked at them more carefully. She was a stout red-faced woman, her hair hanging about her face, her dirty bodice drawn tightly over her enormous bosom and her skirt pulled up in front and hanging, draggled behind her. Her long, dirty fingers went up to her face continually; she had a way of pushing ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... rather tall; her waist was modelled in a clinging bodice, as perfectly fitting as that of a fashionable dame. In spite of her cap, she looked like a real lady. Even her hands, without being conventionally small, were white and delicate, never having touched ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... wore gold-embroidered trousers of purple satin, loose below the knee and full over the ankles, and fastened round her waist by a gold cord with jewelled tassels. A black crape bodice adorned with spangles and gold edging confined her full bosom, and an open vest of grey gauze with long, tight sleeves hung loosely over her waistband. Upon the back of her head was thrown a veiling-sheet of the fine muslin known as the dew of Dacca. Her feet and hands, arms and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers—was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... such very great friends—I really felt I must know you!" cried Mrs. Pickering in the most cordial way. She spoke with a very slight Cockney accent. She bristled with aigrettes and sparkled with jewels. Her bodice was cut very low, her sleeves very short, and her white gloves came over the braceleted elbows. She wore a very high, narrow turban, green satin shoes and stockings, and altogether was dressed rather excessively; she looked like one of Louis Bauer's drawings in Punch. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... as glorious in her array. She had easily discovered a bridesmaid's costume in her wardrobe, bodice with intercrossing stripes, short petticoat in green woolen, mauve stockings, straw hat with artificial flowers, a suspicion of black on the eyelids and of rouge on the cheeks. There you have the provincial stage beauty, and if she and her husband like to play a village piece ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... had never been cleaned as she cleaned it then. She cleaned it with every attribute of herself, forgetting her fatigue. The tears dried on her cheek. The faithful, scrupulous work either drugged or solaced her. Just as she was finishing, Mrs. Tarns, with her immense bodice unfastened, came downstairs, apronless. The lobby ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... have looked perfectly ghastly in this last night, when you were as pale and hollow-eyed as a sick nun; but to-night," and she raised her eyes to my face, "I believe you will do. Don't you want the bodice cut lower?" ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... that the costumes of the country people, both male and female, had varied a good deal since we commenced our ramble. In the neighbourhood of Tetchen, the smock-frock made its appearance among wagoners and even labouring men, while the women wore, as in Saxony, short bodice jackets with long skirts, red or red and white striped petticoats, and round their heads either a flaring red handkerchief, or a cap adorned behind with two enormous flies. As we penetrated further into Bohemia, the smock-frock among the men gave ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... which were tightly bound about the slender ankles by jewelled bands, displaying to advantage the tiny feet, clad in boots of soft, yellow kid, fantastically wrought with gold threads; the robe parted over a bodice of yellow, open at the throat, around which chains of gold and jewels ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... once she ceased to struggle, and, vanquished, resigned, allowed him to undress her. One by one he neatly and rapidly stripped off the different articles of clothing with the light fingers of a lady's maid. She had snatched her bodice from his hands to hide her face in it, and remained standing amidst the garments fallen at her feet. He seized her in his arms and bore her towards the couch. Then she murmured in his ear in a broken voice, "I swear to you, I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Verona and the seven days' tilting were held in her honour in a field below the city wall. But when Luca first knew Mariota and saw how her mother's pride beaconed from her smooth brow, the girl was standing in the Piazza in a tattered green kirtle and bodice that gaped at the hooks, played upon by sun, and fallow wind, and longing looks driven at her eyes in vain. The wench carried her head and light fardel of years like a Princess; would laugh to show her fine teeth if your ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... there stepped into the sunshine the magnificent figure of a woman in Mexican dress—short skirt, low cut bodice, with a veil over her wonderfully dressed hair. She looked down upon the approaching ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... both happy and sad when the dear maid took a flower from her bodice and gave it to him as a token of remembrance. He solemnly tucked it away in a pocket, stammered his farewells, and went to join his uncle who waited in the yawl at the wharf. Once on board the Plymouth Adventure, they were swept into a bustle and confusion. Captain Jonathan ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... Chenier blood by carrying his own baggage and outraging several centuries of devilishly fine history by running—positively running—from ill-armed footpads who had never worn breeches. She would frown, her bosom would swell till her bodice would appear to crackle at the armpits, the seven hairs on her upper lip would bristle all the worse against her purpling face as she cried it was the little Lyons shopkeeper in his mother's grandfather ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... By the heave of her bosom it was plain to see that either her fears still possessed her or that she had been running for dear life, and must catch breath. Her hand went up to her bodice. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... moments, and waiting for her to speak, he went and seated himself at his papers again. His back was turned to her—she began to hear the scratching of his pen. She remained near the door, with her heart thumping beneath her bodice; and she was very glad that his back was turned, for it seemed to her that she could more easily address herself to this portion of his person than to his face. At last she began, watching ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... admirable manner, and, as she talked, he remarked keen intelligence, with an occasional evidence of reading, if not high education. She was dressed in simpler taste than her "court," as it was the fashion then to style the Cabinet group. A few jewels were half hidden in the rare lace that covered her bodice, but she was ungloved, and in no sense in the full-dress understood in the North, at a gathering of the sort. The talk became general. Jack, not knowing the personages, simply listened. There was animated discussion as to whether Mistress Judge this, and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... or with gold. For nearly fifty years Mrs. Shears had worn dresses made from these romantic stuffs and she was wearing them yet—in Cherryvale! They were all made after the same pattern, gathered voluminous skirt and fitted bodice and long flowing sleeves; and, with the small lace cap she always wore on her white hair. Missy thought the old lady looked as if she'd just stepped from the yellow-tinged pages of some fascinating old book. She wished her own grandmother dressed ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall, slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her shoulders, and the pure notes of her ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can't have the things themselves, Sir? What's the use of painting the fire round a poor fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,—as they did at Valencia or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)



Words linked to "Bodice" :   frock, dress, plastron, bodice ripper, top



Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com