"Dumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yelling, as their maid is crimping their miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy's hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the little wretch screams herself into fits. The young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical exploits ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Love. When the face has all the soft beauty of a woman, and the figure, slight, slender, lithe and graceful, carries only a suggestion of the masculine strength to come—then beauty is at perihelion. The "Eros" of Phidias was not the helpless, dumpy cherub "Cupid"—he was a slender-limbed boy of twelve years who showed collar-bone and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... book under her arm, deposited her dumpy person in a seat by his side, and looked up at him with a smile ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... figure. He was, instead, somewhat shorter than the average of men in Europe in 1605 and for some time thereafter. He had small, almost hidden eyes that seemed to see a great deal, but failed completely to make a fuss about the fact. And while his figure was just a trifle dumpy, his face completed the rhyme by being extraordinarily lumpy. The nose, as a matter of strict truth, was hard to distinguish from the other contusions, swellings and marks ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, ladies and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?" About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced, and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in individuals of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I might order out the farm-chariot, or curriculum, which is, after all, but a low, dumpy kind of horse-cart, and take a drive over the lava pavement of the Via Tusculana, to learn what news is astir, and what the citizens talk of in the forum. Is all quiet upon the Rhine? How is it possibly with Germanicus? And what of that story of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... daughter and another girl, fat and dumpy, were at the power site before two o'clock, and without more ado Bill asked Gus to bring the transit to the comparatively level field on top of ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Rhodes, vainly endeavoring to shake off the cigar-stumps and other little et ceteras which were clinging to him like cerements, uttering the while unintelligible oaths. Then he struck for his domus et placens uxor at as rapid a rate as his little dumpy ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... the river runs broad, a blue-green mirror amid dumpy willows and lanky poplars, and the windmills on its banks throw their arms about like giants at play. The steamers swarm in the bright waters; at evening their lights are like will-o'-the-wisps. The long ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... into the court-yard of the castle, with a companion on the crupper of his saddle. 'Twas the venerable hermit of Rolandseck, who, for the sake of greater celerity, had adopted this undignified conveyance, and whose appearance and little dumpy legs might well create hilarity among the "pampered menials" who are always found lounging about the houses of the great. He skipped off the saddle with considerable lightness however; and Sir Ludwig, taking the reverend man by the arm and frowning the jeering servitors into awe, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I own it. But fame, love, Is all that these eyes can adore; He's lame,—but Lord Byron was lame, love, And dumpy,—but so is Tom Moore. Then his voice,—such a voice! my sweet creature, It's like your Aunt Lucy's toucan: But oh! what's a tone or a feature, When once one's a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem. The country, as overlooked from our lofty deck, appeared a dead level of rice and scrubby jungle intermixed, a vast alluvial plain, from which the heavy, fever-breeding mists were rising in rosy folds. Every now and then we passed a Cochin ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... later he had forgotten it all. The dumpy accommodation train was bumping itself along at a great rate, puffing stertorously up the long grade past "Sassafras Hill," and then swinging itself around the curves that followed the river so desperately ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... He seated himself under it, and said: "Now we are in the shade, and the Tree can listen too. But I shall tell only one story. Now which will you have; that about IvedyAvedy, or about Klumpy-Dumpy who tumbled downstairs, and yet after all came to the throne and ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... admiration that attends its progressive movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and matrons—provided they be not "dumpy women"—tall, white, blue, and pink plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate, stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their cheeks—not with kisses—for they would be out of order both of time and place—but with words ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... snow-white cap, somewhat pointed at the top, which hardly concealed her grizzled hair. She was both exhibiting and admiring in dumb show the telescope so lately in the possession of our friend Robin; while Ned Purcell, a little dumpy, grey-headed mariner, who had heretofore been considered the owner of the best glass in Greenwich, was advancing, glass in hand, to decide which was really the best without farther parley. As Robin ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... entered Aix, I had said to myself that the mountains surrounding the town had descended to depths of dumpy ugliness unworthy the name and dignity of mountains. I had formulated the idea that there should be world landscape-gardeners appointed, to work on a grand scale, and alter hills or mountains which Nature had neglected or bungled. But to-day, as we steamed down the long, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... lights, up-all-night hotels, the railway winding through the narrow streets, the piers, the stormy waters, the packets lying by all the piers and filling every convenient space. The old Dover of Turner's well-known picture, or indeed of twenty years ago, with its 'dumpy' steamers, its little harbour, and rude appliances for travel, was a very different Dover from what it is now. There was then no rolling down in luxurious trains to an Admiralty Pier. The stoutest heart might shrink, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields and groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had become morne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yard which the wind of the morning had strewn ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Brer Fox cum a callin', and w'en he gun fer ter laugh 'bout Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ups en tells 'im 'bout w'at Brer Rabbit Say. Den Brer Fox grit his tushes sho' nuff, he did, en he look mighty dumpy, but w'en he riz fer ter go he up en ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... mantle of warm clouds. Forward, on the end of the spare spars, the boatswain and the carpenter sat together with crossed arms; two men friendly, powerful, and deep-chested. Beside them the short, dumpy sailmaker—who had been in the Navy—related, between the whiffs of his pipe, impossible stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards, keeping step and balance without effort, in a confined space. Pigs grunted in the big pigstye. Belfast, leaning ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... what, Munro, I have not lived so long in the woods to listen to wind-guns, and if such is the kind of argument you bring us, your dumpy lawyer—what do you call him?—little Pippin, ought to have been head of your party. He will do it all day long—I've heard him myself, at the sessions, from mid-day till clean dark, and after all ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... sitting on one of those dumpy hassock sort of things. John looked down at me vindictively for a moment and then a horrid smile started spreading ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... not enough that all the elements of a book be honest, sincere, enduring; otherwise the clumsy royal octavos of Leslie Stephen's edition of Fielding would be as attractive as "the dear and dumpy twelves" of the original editions. Royal octavo, indeed, seems to be the pitfall of the book designer, though there is no inherent objection to it. Where in the whole range of reference books will be found a more attractive set of volumes than Moulton's "Library of Literary Criticism," ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... widow, too, and has quite an interesting story. She is a dumpy little woman whose small nose seems to be smelling the stars, it is so tip-tilted. She has the merriest blue eyes and the quickest wit. It is really worth a severe bumping just to be welcomed by her. It was so warm and cozy in her low little cabin. She ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... hoisting myself on a playfellow's shoulders, I looked over the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless stagnant waters, covered with slimy green. In the gaps in the sticky carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily swimming. Today, I should call it a salamander; at that time, it appeared to me the offspring of the serpent and the dragon, of whom we were told such bloodcurdling ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... voice, that was admirably adapted to his appearance. Our captain fairly started; turned full toward the speaker; regarded him intently for a moment; and gulped the words he was about to utter, like one confounded. As he gazed, however, at little dumpy, examining his bow-legs, red broad cheeks, and coarse snub nose, he seemed to regain his self-command, as if satisfied the dead had not really returned ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... and giant cactus were thrush and Western meadow-larks and mocking-birds mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike. There were warblers, cardinals, tanagers, waxwings, song-sparrows, and chickadees. Flitting droves ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... conformation did not assist her in acquiring a graceful flowing style of motion. The elder sister, Lactimel, was of a different form, but yet hardly more fit to shine in the mazes of the dance than her sister. She had her charms, nevertheless, which consisted of a somewhat stumpy dumpy comeliness. She was altogether short in stature, and very short below the knee. She had fair hair and a fair skin, small bones and copious soft flesh. She had a trick of sighing gently in the evolutions of the waltz, which young men attributed to her softness of heart, and old ladies ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large black dots on the rear segment—such is the summary portrait of my visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... 'll go,' whispered Hollyhock. 'Look at Dumpy Dad; he's perfectly miserable. If she does not clear out soon, I 'll turn ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... declared, was almost ready to faint at this announcement, but on turning to look she saw indeed, hanging by a chain to keep the gate closed, a dumpy, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... as laird of Glashruach and chairman of a grand company; while he felt as if something must have gone wrong with the laws of nature that it had become possible for Thomas Galbraith, of Glashruach, Esq., to live in a dumpy cottage. He had thought seriously of resuming his patronymic of Durrant, but reflected that he was too well known to don that cloak of transparent darkness without giving currency to the idea that he had soiled ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... accordingly,—so I must say 'Tenty was not handsome. She had fresh rosy cheeks and small brown eyes, hair to match the eyes, a nose undeniably pug, a full, wide mouth, and strong, white teeth,—fortunately, since every one showed when she laughed, and she laughed a great deal. Then she had a dumpy figure, and good large hands and feet, a look of downright honesty and good-temper, and a nice, clear voice in speech or singing, though she only sang hymns. But for all this, every-body in Deerfield ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and brown roses on a yellowish ground. Thea bought a brown cotton carpet, and her big brother, Gus, put it down for her one Sunday. She made white cheesecloth curtains and hung them on a tape. Her mother gave her an old walnut dresser with a broken mirror, and she had her own dumpy walnut single bed, and a blue washbowl and pitcher which she had drawn at a church fair lottery. At the head of her bed she had a tall round wooden hat-crate, from the clothing store. This, standing on end and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... good, to have seen my young friend after he had ended his nineteenth year. In stature he measured exactly six feet three, and he gave every promise of filling up in proportion. Dirck was none of your roundly-turned, Apollo-built fellows, but he had shoulders that his little, short, solid, but dumpy-looking mother, who was of the true stock, could scarcely span, when she pulled his head down to give him a kiss; which she did regularly, as Dirck told me himself, twice each year; that is to say, Christmas and New-Year. His complexion was fair, his limbs large and well proportioned, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... panorama for the poor man? "I don't want him to be in the panorama," she said, "nor of the panorama; I want you just to be the panorama by yourself." I was forced to decline this singular appeal, glad as I should have been to cheer her dumpy spouse. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... when two years had passed away Her lord took very ill, And left her to her widowhood, Of course, more dumpy still. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... out into the lake. Then he rowed the boat rapidly back into a place of safety. The slab was still sliding, and had cleared the rock out of which it had been cut by an inch. A human hand was thrust out, a dumpy, beringed hand, bleeding with the effort; a most audible voice cried "For God's sake, 'urry!" and then there came a perfect Babel of explosions, and the gallant deliverer was forcibly drawn out of a fierce river of liquid fire that streamed down into the lake, and burned ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... since 1755; Blackhorse Square, still bare of trees; the Government offices, still propped to prevent a tumble-down, and the old Custom House, still a bilious yellow; the vast barrack-like pile of S. Vicente, the historic Se or cathedral with dumpy towers; the black Castle of Sao Jorge, so hardly wrung from the gallant Moors, and the huge Santa Engracia, apparently ever ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in a stout little note book (twopence), and there it has lain for years, for though the authoress was nine when she wrote it she is now a grown woman. It has lain, in lavender as it were, in the dumpy note book, waiting for a publisher to ride that way and rescue it; and here he is at last, not a bit afraid that to this age it may appear "Victorian." Indeed if its pictures of High Life are accurate (as we cannot doubt, the authoress ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this one there is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting green. And then I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of several small box cars and one second-class passenger coach of German manufacture with a dumpy little locomotive at either end, one to pull and one to push. In profile it would have reminded you somewhat of the wrecking trains that go to disasters in America. The prisoners were loaded aboard the box cars like so many sheep, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... was in, of course. She was sitting over the dining-room fire, writing a letter. A short, rather fat, rather dumpy woman, with plain features, an ominous flush on her sallow cheeks, iron-grey hair, and very large, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... she surely was not. She had not their short, dumpy stature, but was slender and graceful, and would not have seemed out of place ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... opportunity for changing the colour), and spreads out right and left and up and down till the poor bishop himself (and in nine cases out of ten it is a bishop, so that he may be mitred and crosiered and pearl-bordered) becomes a mere peg to hang vestments on, and is made short and dumpy for ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... and pounding almonds; not only the two servants, but Rose and Clara, the young work-women who were so often staying in the house, and who, indeed, at one time seemed to form part of the establishment. The old cook herself, a stout and dumpy person, was worth looking at, as she stood surrounded by these young women, who did very little but watch her operations; and the whole formed quite an animated picture of a foreign menage, which one rarely ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... capering. Flingin-tree, a piece of timber hung by way of partition between two horses in a stable; a flail. Fliskit, fretted, capered. Flit, to shift. Flittering, fluttering. Flyte, scold. Fock, focks, folk. Fodgel, dumpy. Foor, fared (i. e., went). Foorsday, Thursday. Forbears, forebears, forefathers. Forby, forbye, besides. Forfairn, worn out; forlorn. Forfoughten, exhausted. Forgather, to meet with. Forgie, to forgive. Forjesket, jaded. Forrit, forward. Fother, fodder. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... La Peignerie and La Forge, with the thin blue smoke of gorse fires floating down from every dumpy chimney and adding a flavour to the sweetest air in the world,—with a morning greeting from everyone they met—over the heights and down the zigzag path to the sloping ledges, and in they went, all three, into ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... was something different from anything we had experienced before. Gallegher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness. He wore perpetually on his face a happy and knowing smile, as if you and the world in general were not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were, and his eyes, which were very black and very bright, snapped ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the Jackson Administration. His wonderful impersonations of Richard III., Iago, King Lear, Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach were as grand as his private life was intemperate and eccentric. He was a short, dumpy man, with features resembling those of the Roman Emperors, before his nose was broken in a quarrel, and his deportment on the stage was imperially grand. He had a farm in Maryland, and at one time he undertook ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a good while. He had found his lordship getting up, and had had to stay to help him dress. At length he came, excusing himself that his lordship's temper at such times—that was, in his dumpy fits—was not of the evenest, and required a gentle hand. But his lordship would see him—and could Mr. Grant find the way himself, for his old bones ached with running up and down those endless stone steps? Donal answered he knew the way, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... of the steps, standing in the snow, was a slender slip of a girl, yellow and earnest, say ten years old, with a shawl pinned over her head. She held in her hand a rope, and this rope was tied to a hand-sled. On this sled sat a little boy, shivering, dumpy and depressed, his bare red hands ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... Zulime to visit our good friends the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper, but it made the trip to Winona and almost home again. It broke down helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the deepest chagrin, although it gave me the final touch for a humorous ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape through ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin^, miniature, pygmy, pigmy^, elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative^, portable; duodecimo^; dumpy, squat; short &c 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic^; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen^, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... see what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you'll be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sympathy and love, and then, if possible, restored her to her husband. Of all this she thought during the few minutes Mrs. Dr. Van Buren talked, and she sat passive in her chair, where she had dropped, with her dumpy little hands lying so helplessly in her lap, and her cap all awry, as Tabby had made it when purring and rubbing ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... positively ugly or grotesquely out of taste. The costumes were as good as the customs, and I have already celebrated the manners of this crowd. I believe I must except the costumes of the bicyclesses, who were unfailingly dumpy in effect when dismounted, and who were all the more lamentable for tottering about, in their short skirts, upon the tips of their narrow little, sharp-pointed, silly high-heeled shoes. How severe I am! But those high heels seemed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was whispered that "the Tebbs had only one best dress between them"—a certain rich black silk. As Miss Jane was at least six inches taller than dumpy Miss Mitty, difficulties of length were cunningly surmounted by an adjustable flounce. Needless to add that on festive occasions, such as high teas, little dinners, and card parties, the sisters never appeared together, the one ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... discomfiture manfully. He formed a resolution then and there to become a good shot, and although he did not succeed exactly in becoming so that day, he nevertheless managed to put several fine specimens of gulls and an auk into his bag. The last bird amused him much, being a creature with a dumpy little body and a beak of preposterously large size and comical aspect. There were also a great number of eider-ducks flying about, but they ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Ede, remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. And the moment she was gone Kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. Like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. She lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, hoping ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Jawn's dumpy little engine was blowing off on a siding. Jawn was oiling. He was a short man, filling out his wide overalls with an in-'em-to-stay appearance. His beard was brushy, his eyes were lost in a gray tangle of brows and lashes, and he chewed the stem ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... voice that often irritated me. She was ruddy-faced and bursting with health, taller than Mrs. Dienstog, yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy. What I particularly hated in her was her laughter, which sounded for all the world like the gobble of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... that a door must be either open or shut. The bibliophile is apt to think that a book should be either little or big. For my own part, I become more and more attached to "dumpy twelves"; but that does not preclude a certain discreet fondness for folios. If a man collects books, his library ought to contain a Herbal; and if he has but room for one, that should be the best. The luxurious and sufficient thing, I think, is to possess what booksellers call "the right ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... has no monument to Penn, save the hazy figure of a dumpy nobody surmounted by an enormous hat, all lost in the incense of commerce upon the topmost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... thin-bladed saw, and he rapidly cut out the old hard bough, close down to the place where it branched from the dumpy trunk, and then, handing me the tool, he knelt down on a pad of carpet he carried ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... cultivated her love for Ormersfield, and she was charmed by her visits to old haunts, well remembering everything. She gladly recognised the little low-browed church, the dumpy tower, and grave-yard rising so high that it seemed to intend to bury the church itself, and permitted many a view, through the lattices, of the seats, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more amused with a hackney-coach party, than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waist-coats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... she said, "Martha's been hunting everywhere for you. Miss North wants you in her office right away. There's a man with her—a dumpy—I beg your pardon—but a short, stout man with a bald head. I think it's your uncle, or cousin. Anyway, hurry! There's something doing. Miss North looks like a war cloud without a ghost of a silver lining. She was just laying ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... about sixteen years old when he began to reign; in person he had what his friends would call a dumpy, but his mamma styled, a neat little figure. His hair was of a healthy brown colour, which looked like gold in the sunshine. His face was round, rosy, freckled, and good-humoured. In fact, without being a beauty, he had such a frank, good-natured, kind face and laughed ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... as a child she was broad and dumpy, and they always come back at last to what they were as children. But of course M. Urmand only looks to what she is now. She makes her hay while the sun shines; but I hope the people won't say that your father has caught him at the Lion d'Or, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... and at the end of the long walk fronting the lake at Lucerne,—the walk studded with the round, dumpy, Noah's-ark trees,—stands a great building surrounded by flowers and palms, and at night ablaze with hundreds of lamps hung in festoons of blue, yellow, and red. This is the Casino. On each side of the wide entrance is a bill-board, announcing that some world-renowned Tyrolean ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him. He had tried, vigorously but ineffectually, to mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but then he was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and might, by courage and energy, become the master of that delightful, downy, dumpy, yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green grass in front of him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it, but only to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping through his fingers as ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and ugly and dowdy and—widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness and it was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in Hillsboro, Tennessee, or Paris, France, could possibly feel on the subject that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won't know him in the morning, for something made ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and brushing the filth from my eyes, leaned both arms on the chimney-pot while I scanned the roofs around for a glimpse between them, down to the street and Mr. Trapp. I did so at ease, for a flue entered the main shaft immediately below the stack, which was a decidedly dumpy one—in fact, less than five feet tall; so that I supported myself not by the arms alone but by resting my toes on the ridge ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... In sun and snow They're dear, but most when tempests fall; The folio towers above the row As once, o'er minor prophets—Saul! What jolly jest books, and what small "Dear dumpy Twelves" to fill the nooks. You do not find in every stall The ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... and big heavy fist tightened. Then he drew himself up to his full dumpy height. "Dr. Pietro," he said stiffly, "I am as responsible to my duties as any man here—and my duties involve protecting the life of every man and woman on board; if you wish to return, I shall be most happy to submit this to a formal board ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... and no amount of coaxing could persuade her to bring them back. "You refused me a vacation when I asked for it," she said, "so I'm going to have it perforce;" and, playfully catching up the little dumpy figure of her governess, she carried her out upon the piazza, and, seating her in a large easy-chair, bade her take snuff, and comfort too, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... behind them."—Schmidt, I. 213, 313 (Dutard, May 13 and 27). Violent treatment of the moderates in the Bon-Conseil and Arsenal sections; "struck with chairs, several persons wounded, one captain carried off on a bench; the gutter-jumpers and dumpy shopkeepers cleared out, leaving the sans-culottes masters of the field."—Meillan, 111.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 237, session of the Jacobin club, May 26. "In the section of Butte-des-Moulins the patriots, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... conversation the boys had been walking toward the village, and, in a few moments, they reached the dock behind the post-office, where the two new boats lay. One of them was a short, "dumpy," sloop-rigged boat, with no deck or center-board, and the other was a ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... waist-line raised the merest bit. If he is too short-waisted he can lengthen his skirt and lower his waist-line, as shown in No. 86. In the one he escapes appearing too long and lanky in body, and in the other he obscures a lack of becoming inches that tends to give him a dumpy appearance. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... have I ever appeared as anything else but a servant of God, who has simply followed the leadings of his hand. My views of what is missionary duty are not so contracted as those whose ideal is a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm. I have labored in bricks and mortar, at the forge and carpenter's bench, as well as in preaching and medical practice. I feel that I am 'not my own.' I am serving Christ ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... eyes, and Jenny, throwing a stick at her brother, exclaimed, "For shame, Henry Lincoln! You always was the meanest boy. Her feet ain't any bigger than mine. See," and she stuck up her little dumpy foot, about twice ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Gilman that my name is Dorothea. I'm tired of being called Dot, 'specially as I'm round and dumpy," remarked Jack's ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... Peel was not the least like her niece. She was short and rather dumpy. She had a sensible, downright sort of face, and she took life with a gravity which would have oppressed a ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... thick only upon the chin. Such was the highest type; the commoner was squat, dumpy, and heavy. Chest and shoulders seem to be enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and the hips, to such an extent as to make the want of proportion between the upper and lower parts of the body startling and ungraceful. The skull is long, somewhat retreating, and slightly flattened on the top; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to see such a vehicle trudging along at such an hour, where no carriage had ever passed before. The two young men were odd characters; the horses were oddly matched, one being a little dumpy black pony, and the other a noble white steed; and it was an odd whim which induced Glenn to abandon his comfortable home in Philadelphia, and traverse such inclement wilds. But love can play the "wild" ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... looked like an exploded bale of goods. "What! what!" gasped Don Guillermo. "Thou little rat! Thou wouldst make a Christmas doll of thyself with satin that is too heavy for thy grandmother, and eke out thy dumpy inches with a train? Oh, Mother of God!" He turned to the captain, who was smoking complacently, assured of the issue. "I will let them carry these things home; but to-morrow one-half, at least, comes back." And he stamped wrathfully ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... yourself as you like about my dumpy figure, so long as you smile and are merry; but, come, wash your face in the brook, and let us join the rest. If the girls were to see you with that face they would screech beyond stopping; and, as for Madame, she would go into such a fit we should ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... little bears, Fatty (who was the one who had been sucking his paws) and Dumpy, were delighted to have a new playmate, and they told him he might come over and slide down their hill, but the third one, Sprawley, scowled and grumbled. "Another one to be eating up our meat," he said. "Just as if there weren't ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... were not speckled and small, but of a very pretty white, and quite a handful for the juvenile fingers. But the bereaved "parient" was not slender and active,—in fact, was rather a tame, confiding, dumpy and dull, pepper-and-salt-colored dame. Her complaints were not touching, but rather ludicrous,—so much so, indeed, as to suggest to the human hen-bird that "Biddy was laughing to think what a nice breakfast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there the other day when a squeak fell on my ear. 'Ho, ho,' said I, 'there you go, my boys;' and I hurried up the glen. I soon started them, and singling out a fat pig, ran tilt at him. In a few seconds I was up with him, and stuck my spear right through his dumpy body. Just as I did so, I saw that we were on the edge of a precipice—whether high or low, I knew not; but I had been running at such a pace that I could not stop, so the pig and I gave a howl in concert and went plunging over together. I remembered nothing more after that till I ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the throne, 'tis strange to see What different and what odd perfections Men have required in Royalty. Some, liking monarchs large and plumpy, Have chosen their Sovereigns by the weight;— Some wisht them tall, some thought your Dumpy, Dutch-built, the true Legitimate.[1] The Easterns in a Prince, 'tis said, Prefer what's called a jolterhead:[2] The Egyptians weren't at all partic'lar, So that their Kings had not red hair— This fault not even the greatest stickler For the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... caught a sight of my counterfeit presentment in a shop window, and veiled my haughty crest. That a notorious Infidel! Behold a dumpy, comfortable British paterfamilias in a light flannel suit and a faded sun hat. No; it will not do. Not a bit like Mephisto: much more like ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... peasant-girl. For the first time in her life she saw ferocity in that face. The moonlight seemed to heighten the effect of it. The savage Breton, holding his cap in one hand and his heavy carbine in the other, dumpy and thickset as a gnome, and bathed in that white light the shadows of which give such fantastic aspects to forms, seemed to belong more to a world of goblins than to reality. This apparition and ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... but one, were very carefully selected material, out of which to form, as soon as practicable, skilled engineer soldiers. The one exception was a short, fat, dumpy, Long Island Dutchman—a good cook, specially enlisted by Captain Swift to cook for the men. He was given the pay and rank of artificer of engineers. The men looked upon him more as a servant of theirs than as a fellow soldier. He was well satisfied with his position, prided himself on his special ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... woman with solemn eyes, holding by the hand two dumpy little boys, came to the box-office of a theater. Handing in a quarter, she asked meekly for the best seat she could get for ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... have my attention drawn off from the increasing storm without, and from the bitter cup which I knew the Irish sea was preparing for me. The harper presently struck up a livelier strain, when two Welsh girls, who were chatting before the grate, one of them as dumpy as a bag of meal and the other slender and tall, stepped into the middle of the floor and began to dance to the delicious music, a Welsh mechanic and myself drinking our ale and looking on approvingly. After a while the pleasant, modest-looking bar-maid, whom I had seen behind the beer-levers as ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Rosy tripped out of the kitchen, and in an instant returned with the desiderated commodity—a dumpy, bluff, opaque bottle, of about a gallon contents—which she placed on the table. Adair seized it by its long neck, and, filling up a brimming bumper, tossed it off to the health of his guest. This done, he filled up another topping glass, and presented it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... to think it the very apex of highcockalorumdom to have the skeleton of a greyhound and highly polished collar—following them through crowded thorough-fares. Some young ladies, especially those of doubtful ages, delight in caressing lumps of white, cotton-looking dumpy dogs and toting them around, to the disgust of the lookers-on—with all the fondness and blind infatuation of a mamma with her first born, bran new baby. Wherever you see any quantity of white and black ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... in dress. Every costume looked tawdry beside her richly flowing velvet draperies—every low bodice became indecent compared with the modesty of that small square opening at Thelma's white throat—an opening just sufficient to display her collar of diamonds—and every figure seemed either dumpy and awkward, too big or too fat, or too lean and too lanky—when brought into contrast ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... wool they must have stored up somewhere. As to books, one invariably begins by collecting the wrong things. In novels and essays you read of "priceless Elzevirs," and "Aldines worth their weight in gold." Fired with hope, you hang about all the stalls, where you find myriads of Elzevirs, dumpy, dirty little tomes, in small illegible type, and legions of Aldines, books quite as dirty, if not so dumpy, and equally illegible, for they are printed in italics. You think you are in luck, invest largely, and begin to give yourself the airs of an amateur and a discoverer. Then comes somebody ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... boys had reached the "beautiful room with three beds in it." A dumpy little maiden with long earrings met them at the doorway, dropped them a curtsy, and passed out. She carried a long-handled thing that resembled a ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... most beautiful of the Indian girls. Now and again too, the canny Scotch lad, with his gun on his shoulder and his retriever at his heel, would walk through a Saulteux settlement. The girls here were still shyer than their Cree cousins, but they were not a whit less lovely. They were not dumpy like so many Indian girls, but were slight of build, and willowy of motion. Their hair was long and black, but it was as fine as silk, and shone like the plumage of a blackbird. There was not that oily swarthiness in the complexion, which makes ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Dunwood House! He had once confused it with its rival, Cedar View. Now he was to live there—perhaps for many years. On the left of the entrance a large saffron drawing-room, full of cosy corners and dumpy chairs: here the parents would be received. On the right of the entrance a study, which he shared with Herbert: here the boys would be caned—he hoped not often. In the hall a framed certificate praising the drains, the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... demeanor indicating the calm strength acquired by long familiarity with the elements in their roughest moods. As we approached the ship, her appearance was not prepossessing. She is undoubtedly clumsy; the three masts are low, the funnel is short and dumpy, there is no bowsprit, and her sides are painted black, relieved only by one long streak of dark red. Her length between the perpendiculars—that is, the length of her keel—is 276 feet; breadth (exclusive of paddle-boxes), 45; thus keeping up the proportion, as old as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... conquered a peace, and from that time forth he suffered no persecution at school. Master Herbert soon after went back to his city home, wondering how it was that a small, dumpy lad, four years younger than he, was able to vanquish him so completely when all the science was on the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... Maria drew a troubled breath. She, too, felt the family responsibility for Julietta—dear Julietta, with her dumpy figure and ugly face. Julietta was nineteen and now that Lucia was betrothed it ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... this, but she had an uneasy misgiving that she had a cotton back herself. It would settle down, at times, and make her squat and dumpy, and then she had to roll herself in the road until her body stretched ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl, a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... for luck, my dear; and mind you make the best of poor Miss Milner's dumpy, roundabout little figure. There I have put the body-lining, and the measuring-tape, and a paper of pins in this little black bag; and I have not forgotten the scissors,—oh, dear, no! I have not forgotten ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... about a Chinese wedding we had the other day at our house. The bridegroom was Akiat, a carpenter, about six feet two inches high. He was dressed in whity-brown silk, which made him look like a tall spectre; and the bride was Quey Ginn, a fat, dumpy little girl of sixteen, the Chinese deacon's daughter, and one of my scholars. She did not choose her old husband of fifty years, but her parents arranged it, and Akiat paid one hundred dollars for his wife. I went to see her the day before the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... captain amused himself after his fashion, sometimes running up, of course on business, to London. I believe few wives have ever cried more in a given time than did that poor, dumpy, potato-faced heiress, who got over the nunnery garden wall, and jumped into the ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Mademoiselle Prefere's pupils were leaving the school in procession to attand Mass at the parish church. I watched them passing two by two,—the little ones first with very serious faces. There were three of them all dressed exactly alike—dumpy, plump, important- looking little creatures, whom I recognized at once as the Mouton girls. Their elder sister is the artist who drew that terrrible head of Tatius, King of the Sabines. Beside the column, the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... rather short, dumpy woman and inclined to be stout and short of breath. She had iron-gray hair, near-sighted dark eyes and very pretty, very plump small hands. She exclaimed over her room when she saw it, said that everything was lovely and insisted on kissing the three girls again. Sarah promptly left ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... King Humphrey out of the council-room. Fleet admirals brought up the rear. The stodgy, dumpy figure of the king tramped onward. It became obvious that he was bound for the ground-cars that waited to take him and those who would follow him to the ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... out into the main avenue, and now returned with the fallen sword, which looked ludicrously large and theatrical when attached to his dumpy figure, at once clerical and commonplace. "Just before the police come," he said apologetically, "has anyone ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... one long for the animal's extermination. It is quite possible that this is really what the seal wants, because to become extinct and to occupy a place of honour beside the dodo is a distinction much coveted amongst the lower animals. The dodo was a squabby, ugly, dumpy, not to say fat-headed, bird when it lived; now it is a hero of romance. Possibly this is what the seal is aiming at; but personally I should prefer the extinction ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large eyes and the lips!—all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to the young draughtsman's pencil, and cover letter-backs, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love—a mother who knows how to contrive opportunities without conceding favours, how to take ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... She's a wide, dumpy-built old girl, and dressed sort of freaky. Also her line of talk is a kind of purry, throaty gush that's almost too soothin' to be true. But anybody who makes only half a bluff at being interested in our garden wins us. And not until she's inspected our first string-beans ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, pie-faced old girl, with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see in the Sixth-ave. show cases. She was actin' kind of nervous, and grinnin' a silly kind ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... time for remaining silent had ended and the time to speak had come. Since the man with the hundred typewriters and the millions was unequal to the task, Lilienfeld had to take the reins in his own hands. From the mouth of the dumpy, bull-necked impresario, the words came pouring with irresistible momentum, with elemental force, as from the crater of ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was a flush on her face. The gentleman, in the act of starting the horses, raised his hat. King was delighted to notice that he was bald. He had a round head, snugly-trimmed beard slightly dashed with gray, was short and a trifle stout—King thought dumpy. "I suppose women like that kind of man," he said to Mrs. Cortlandt when the carriage was out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of his confession, though, Mr. Lobel bounded out of his chair, magically changing from a dumpy static figure of woe into the dynamo of energy and resourcefulness the glassed-in studios and the out-of-door ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... were tall and well built, others had squat figures with broad shoulders and excessively thick arms and legs. No two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head: Vicente had an oval visage, with fine regular features, while a little dumpy fellow, the wag of the party, was quite a Mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of eyes; but these two formed the extremes as to face and figure. None of them were tattooed or disfigured ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... that the width had been ten paces because a woman, Mrs. An. Cotton, who once lived near James Towne, had said so. But the Commodore pointed out that we had never seen Mrs. Cotton, and that we did not know whether she was a tall woman or a little dumpy woman; and so could not have the slightest idea of how far ten paces would carry her. On his part, he pinned his faith to the statement of Strachey, a man who had lived in James Towne and who had said that the isthmus was no broader than "a man will quaite a tileshard." But this ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... which, upon the musket going off as he rammed down, had gone off too. He was invalided and sent home during Jack's absence, and another had been appointed, whose name was Tallboys. Mr Tallboys was a stout dumpy man, with red face, and still redder hands; he had red hair and red whiskers, and he had read a great deal—for Mr Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important personage in the ship. He had once been a captain's clerk, and having distinguished himself very much ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... not asleep. At that modest tap up sprang a curly head, two dark, bright eyes opened wide, two white feet sprang quickly but noiselessly on to the floor, and Polly had opened the bedroom door wide to admit the short, dumpy, but excited little person of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... rather damped his expectations: but he persisted in believing her look towards the chapel must have a meaning in it, till she suddenly stood erect, and revealed herself as short in stature—almost dumpy—at the same time giving him a distinct view of her profile. She was not at all like the heroine of the chapel. He saw the dinted nose of the De Stancys outlined with Holbein shadowlessness against the blue-green of the distant wood. It was not the De Stancy face with all ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Susan is the happiest girl under heaven! My Thomas is an angel! not a tall grenadier-like looking fellow, such as I always vowed I would marry:—on the contrary, he is what the world would call dumpy, and I hesitate not to confess, that his eyes have a cast in them. But what then? when one of his eyes is fixed on me, and one on my babe, they are lighted up with an affection which my pen cannot describe, and which, certainly, was never bestowed upon any woman so ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Carley. She looked from near to far, trying to grasp the illusive something. Wild lonely Arizona land! She saw ragged dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round space of water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the distance isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black uplift of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... large and tall in the Scandinavian mountain-scene, grey of shadow and glancing with sun-gleams that rent the thick veils of mist-cloud, assumed a manner of Ossianic grandeur. After three hours and a half we were abreast of Zib, around whose dumpy tower all the population had congregated. Thence the regular coralline bank, whose beach is the Bab, runs some distance down coast, allowing passage to our ugly old friend, Wady Salm. The next important mouth is the Wady Amd, showing ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... withdrew, a buggy rattled up to the door of the little shop. In the broad strip of light formed by the lamp opposite the door, the creaking vehicle stopped short. A dumpy female in a nondescript black garment took the reins, while her male companion descended heavily, putting both feet upon the step, and cautiously lowering himself to the ground close beside the spot where Flint and Brady stood. Once assured that ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... when we heard the wheels crossing the mossy log bridge. We raced to let down the bars. Beside Daniel sat a dear dumpy little woman, her head very much bundled up with a lot of old black veils. Daniel drove through the corral, into the yard, and right up to the door. He helped her out so gently. She kept admonishing him, "Careful, Danyul, careful." He handed out her ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... size, with a plane-tree in the middle of it, and a few small shops along one side. Opposite the shops was the inn, the doctor's house, the market-house, and a public reading-room; and a bylane led from the green up towards the church—an old, low-walled, steep-roofed building, with a square, dumpy tower, in which hung a peal of bells, and where was placed a large, round, clumsy window. A clump of hardwood trees enclosed the upper end of the church-yard, and extended to the back of the rector's garden, quite concealing his many-gabled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... jars weighed a pound, and in each was found a little over a tea-spoonful of jam. Verily, we began to think our hopes and expectations had been raised to too high a pitch. Three bottles of curry were next produced—but who cares for curry? Another box was opened, and out tumbled a fat dumpy Dutch cheese, hard as a brick, but sound and good; though it is bad for the liver in Unyamwezi. Then another cheese was seen, but this was all eaten up—it was hollow and a fraud. The third box contained nothing ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... not long. It sho' was a dumpy little place then and I gets the stagecoach to Austin. It takes us two days to get there and I thinks my back busted sho' 'nough, it was sich rough ridin'. Then I has trouble sho'. A man asks me where I goin' and says to come 'long and he takes me to a Mr. Charley ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Wilder. This, then, was Miss Wharton. What Grace saw in that quick glance was a round, red, satisfied face lit by two cold pale blue eyes, and surmounted by lifeless brown hair, plentifully streaked with gray. There was neither grace nor majesty in her short, dumpy figure, and Grace's first impression of her was decidedly unpleasant. An impression which she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... least we left it. Whether to recover it when wanted, is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and red-stubble chins, might take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... down straight and thin upon his shoulders, and being without his coat, with pants that reached only half way between his knees and ankles, he cut a ludicrous figure as he straddled on, followed by a short, dumpy man, who, waddle as ambitiously as he might, swiftly fell behind, without, however, seeming in ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Katje Voss, whose people had settled about thirty miles off—next door, as it were. Katje held views not entirely dissimilar, but she consented to marry him, and the big youth walked on air. Katje was a dumpy Boer girl, with a face all cream and roses, and a figure that gave promise of much fat hereafter. Christina had imagined other things, but the ideal is a rickety structure, and she yielded; while David had never considered such an emergency, and ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her. She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck, and gave ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... he will be glad to see you," she answered, "for he is all alone to-night and very dumpy. Miss Bellingham is out. But I must remind you that he's a poor man and pays his way. You must ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne, she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... in his crown was in her late thirties and less than lovely. He had learned, indeed, that in the game which, for the chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a saintlike seemliness. The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore, and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in its whole effect ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... up his foot, which had a gouty appearance owing to its being contained in a dumpy little worsted sock, and I thought he proposed to repeat his first performance, but in this I did him an injustice, for, unlike Porthos, he was one who scorned to do the same feat twice; perhaps, like the conjurors, ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the mis-matching usually arises from the fact that the penis of the husband is too long for the vagina of the wife. This is very apt to be the case where the wife is of the "dumpy" sort, with a small mouth and short fingers, while the husband is "gangling," large mouthed and long fingered. These are facts that ought to be taken into account before marriage, and which should figure in determining whether the parties are "suited" to each other. They ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long |
