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Feminine   Listen
noun
Feminine  n.  
1.
A woman. (Obs. or Colloq.) "They guide the feminines toward the palace."
2.
(Gram.) Any one of those words which are the appellations of females, or which have the terminations usually found in such words; as, actress, songstress, abbess, executrix. "There are but few true feminines in English."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books



... small room, apparently under the roof, which scarcely allowed her to stand upright. By the light of a stable lantern hanging from a beam he saw that, though poorly furnished, it bore some evidence of feminine taste and habitation. Motioning to the only chair, she seated herself on the edge of the bed, with her hands clasping her knees in her familiar attitude. Her face bore traces of recent agitation, and her eyes were shining with tears. By the closer light of the lantern he was surprised ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... received from a sturdy old tar for an ill-timed comment on a woman's personal appearance. It was in St. Salvador. The captain of a Portuguese ship was going on shore accompanied by his wife. The boat crossed the bows of the ship I was in; the feminine garments attracted the attention of all hands, who suspended their work and gazed upon the charming object as if they beheld something more than mortal. As the boat passed onward, and we resumed labors which the glimpse of a petticoat had interrupted, with a want of gallantry ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... mother had caused to be instructed in dancing, and other arts of pleasing, with the sole idea of bringing her to Machaerus and presenting her to the tetrarch, so that he should fall in love with her fresh young beauty and feminine wiles. The plan had proved successful, it seemed; he was evidently fascinated, and Herodias felt that at last she was sure of retaining her ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... character, Richardson seems to have been a respectable person of rather feminine temperament and, though good-natured to his friends, endowed with a feminine spitefulness. Fielding, though by no means answering to the standard of minor and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... in her present disheveled condition, she was beautiful—a trifle on the petite side, with black hair and black eyes that quirked up oddly at the outer corners. Her nails were black-lacquered and spotted with little gold stars, evidently a new feminine fad ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... sweetened by a cordial graciousness that made the hotel employees her slaves. Bell-boys fought for the honor of answering her ring; the clerks, but for the question of ownership, would have deeded to her the hotel and its contents; the other guests regarded her as the final touch of feminine exclusiveness and beauty that rendered the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... (indicating character), all over the body. And it is so in vegetable life. For in a plant every leaf is a hand. Man hath two; a tree many, and every one reveals its anatomy—a hand-anatomy. Now ye shall understand that in double form the lines are masculine or feminine. And there are as many differences in these lines on leaves as in ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... cordially. Their first questions to him were significant of the masculine and feminine ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... not be supposed that Mrs. Gould's mind was masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation—interestingly barren and without importance. Dona Emilia's intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy. She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of the heart having ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... answer, but only indicated with his eyes a feminine figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung carelessly on one shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or daughter of the station-master. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... came over me; that desire to say what one really does not believe (a feminine trait), and I replied: "Are both those articles necessary to any one? A sleeve?—well, one must be clothed. But a heart?—a cumbrous thing, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the carpet?—Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet, when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... an adjective preceding a noun is preceded by the article an, the. If the noun or adjective is masculine singular or the noun feminine, or the adjective of either, plural, its initial remains in the first state. If the noun or adjective is feminine singular or the noun is masculine plural, {78} it is changed ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... of the Hotel de Malrive—it had been a surprise to the American to read the name of the house emblazoned on black marble over its still more monumental gateway—Durham found himself surrounded by a buzz of feminine tea-sipping oddly out of keeping with the wigged and cuirassed portraits frowning high on the walls, the majestic attitude of the furniture, the rigidity of great gilt consoles drawn up like lords-in-waiting against ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... the boys looked at Cinda, and when they saw the latest fashions displayed, the prettiest gown, the neatest slippers, and the stunning hat they took off their caps, and made a neat bow in recognition of that feminine touch of character which so readily adapts the sex for acquiring the latest ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... and bath. A small linoleous gas-stove kitchen. A bedroom with standing wardrobe, iron bed, and just one graceful piece of furniture—Una's dressing-table; a room pervasively feminine in its scent and in the little piles of lingerie which Mrs. Golden affected more, not less, as she grew older. The living-room, with stiff, brown, woolen brocade chairs, transplanted from their Panama home, a red plush sofa, two large oak-framed ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... good mile from town when suddenly one of Ridge's companions uttered a sharp cry, in a voice distinctly feminine, and reeled in her saddle. The other, whom Ridge now knew to be del Concha, leaped from his horse and caught her in his arms ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... heart was lifted and he was overcome in a sweet possessive trouble. He sought for the cheque amid the bundle of cheques and, finding it, he pressed the paper to his face. The cheque was written in a thin, feminine handwriting, and was signed "Henrietta Brown," and the name and handwriting were pregnant with occult significances in Dempsey's disturbed mind. His hand paused amid the entries, and he grew suddenly aware of some dim, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... him before. The youth's back being towards them, the apprentice unhesitatingly answered in the negative, but as the subject of investigation turned the next moment, and looked up, revealing features of feminine delicacy and beauty, set off by long flowing jet-black ringlets, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the lines in a characteristic feminine fashion. Dick declared that his father was delighted to hear of his happiness and that he had not forgotten that they probably owed their son's life to the girl to whom ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook

... resort to the expedient to which he did when the two women disputed over the right to the living child. Modern science is now deciding by exact laboratory methods the same problem as he solved by his unique knowledge of feminine psychology. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... and King of the Romans. But this passage of his opening speech is what I recollect best of him there: "Right reverend Fathers, date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with—which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam (I am King of the Romans, and above Grammar)!" For which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... love with, but will not be directed by the man whom she esteems the most. The former is the result of passion, which is her character; the latter must be the effect of reasoning, which is by no means of the feminine gender. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... perhaps, a professional man of some kind, whose blamelessness has not brought him solid success, so that there is always tightness. And it is beautiful to remark the cheerfulness of the girls, and how they accept the tightness as a necessary part of the World's Order; and how they welcome each new feminine arrival as if it was really going to add a solid lump of comfort to the family joy. These girls face work from the beginning. Well for them if they have any better training than the ordinary day-school, or ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... moment, expecting to see him or hear him. Then, as nothing happened, she screamed. She was a woman of quick impulses, essentially feminine; and she screamed three or four times, standing where she was, her eyes on the edge of the wood. "If that does not bring her out, nothing ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... the Air; —tar is the usual feminine suffix in Finnish, and is generally to be understood to mean "daughter of ——." In the following passages we have the combined Finnish version of the widespread cosmogonical myths of the Divine Spirit brooding over the waters of Chaos; and the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... handsome for a man," observed Agnes; "yet, after all, one can hardly say so, his face, though fine, is not feminine." ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... sometimes comic when he wishes to be passionate, and frequently verbose when he wishes to be expressive. But the fire, the full-bloodedness, the poetical virility, of the poems is extraordinary. A kind of intoxication of the eternal-feminine seems to have seized the poet to an extent not otherwise to be paralleled in the group, except in Sidney; while Sidney's courtly sense of measure and taste did not permit him Barnes's forcible extravagances. Here is ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... III., obtained, with her person, the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza as her portion. Thus, by a strange destiny, Margaret at the age of maturity was contracted to a boy, as in the years of infancy she had been sold to a man. Her disposition, which was anything but feminine, made this last alliance still more unnatural, for her taste and inclinations were masculine, and the whole tenor of her life belied her sex. After the example of her instructress, the Queen of Hungary, and her great-aunt, the Duchess ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... scruples respecting piracy, and so long as the captain was a godly man who kept up strict discipline on board, Master Richard held the quarterdeck to be a much more wholesome place than the Manor-house, and much preferred the humours of the ship to those of any other feminine creature; for, as to his Susan, he always declared that she was the only woman ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... husband, this royal lady was surrounded by officialdom, or, rather, by its complementary and feminine appendices—the wives and daughters of the aristocracy, of politicians, of ecclesiastical and military dignitaries: these to her represented the sphere, activity, and capacity of her own sex. Other ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... arms, the following inventions are attributed to him. The soldier has a crimson-coloured uniform and a heavy shield of bronze; his theory being that such an equipment has no sort of feminine association, and is altogether most warrior-like. (4) It is most quickly burnished; it is least readily ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... in the feminine comprehends all sorts of intoxicating liquors, many kinds of which the Indians from the earliest times distilled and prepared from rice, sugar-cane, the palm tree, and various flowers and plants. Nothing is considered more disgraceful among orthodox Hindus than ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... in the early winter was the signal for a feminine hegira toward New York. On the nights when he sang women flocked to the Metropolitan from mansions and hotels, from typewriter desks, schoolrooms, shops, and fitting rooms. They were of all conditions and complexions. Women of the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... both Greek and Latin; thus, a trithemimeral (after the 3rd half-foot) is combined with the hephthemimeral, which divides the verse into two unequal parts. A caesura is often called masculine when it falls after a long, feminine when it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... underworld, the sun emerged from the washing of his left eye and the moon from the washing of his right. Japanese writers have sought to differentiate the two myths by pointing out that the sun is masculine in China and feminine in Japan, but such an objection is inadequate ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... up again if you wanted to," and Eliza beamed upon the Doctor with an affection that was the acme of idealization. She had forgotten that only a few hours ago she had renounced her loyalty at the memory of the oil, but Miss Wingate smiled in appreciation of this display of further feminine inconsistency. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... fluffy-haired, clinging, cuddly, ultra-feminine specimen who hung on to Raymonde like a limpet. Raymonde twisted her flaxen locks for her in curl rags, helped to thread baby ribbon through her under-bodices, hauled her out of bed in the mornings, drummed her lessons into her, formed her opinions, and generally dominated ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... later, Mill, also inspired by a woman, published his Subjection of Women. However partial and inadequate it may seem to us, this was at that day a notable book. Mill's clear vision and feminine sensibilities gave freshness to his observations regarding the condition and capacity of women, while his reputation imparted gravity and resonance to his utterances. Since then the signs in literature of the breaking up of the status of women have become far too ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... excites the minds of the males of Anaheim, because if Orso, who until now, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had overthrown the strongest Americans, will be defeated, great glory will cover all California. The feminine minds are not less excited by the following number of the programme: Orso will carry, on a pole thirty feet high, a small fairy, the "Wonder of the World," of which the poster says that she is the most beautiful girl that ever lived ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... there was not an article in the room which did not carry a little trumpet to the distinguished poet's honour and glory. Hidden from view in his buhl cabinet, but none the less vivid to his sensitive egoism, were those tenderer trophies of his power, spoils of the chase, which the adoring feminine had offered up at his shrine: all his love-letters sorted in periods, neatly ribboned and snugly ensconced in various sandalwood niches—much as urns are ranged at the Crematorium, Woking—with locks of hair of many hues. He loved most to think of those letters in which the women had gladly ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... feel inclined to feast his fancy on Balbilla's image, lovely as it appeared to him; on the contrary, with self-inflicted severity he sought everything in her which could be thought to be opposed to the highest standard of feminine perfections. Nor did he find it difficult to detect many defects and deficiencies in the Roman damsel; still he was forced to admit that they were quite inseparable from her character, and that she would no longer be what she was, if she were wholly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... village soon became quite reconciled to the hitherto unheard-of position assumed by this young girl, without a guardian or a chaperon, who lived a frank, fearless life among them, making every day terrible assaults upon that code of feminine behaviour which hedges ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... fitful flashes of a nature grand and heroic, in the Italian child, especially of late—flashes the more remarkable from their contrast to a form most exquisitely feminine, and to a sweetness of temper which made even her pride gentle. But now it seemed as if the child spoke with the command of a queen—almost with the inspiration of a Muse. A strange and new sense of courage ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... what you please about feminine "togs," That they're ugly, unhealthy, are burdens or clogs, Too high, or too low, or too loose, or too tight, There is just one reply (but 'tis more than enough) To such "rational," but most irrelevant stuff:— If not in the Fashion, a Woman's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... revolt against his merciless dominion. They had hitherto submitted from fear, and not from love; and, if they had not rebelled, it was only for want of a leader. Even the ladies regarded Mr. Falkland with particular complacence. His polished manners were peculiarly in harmony with feminine delicacy. The sallies of his wit were far beyond those of Mr. Tyrrel in variety and vigour; in addition to which they had the advantage of having their spontaneous exuberance guided and restrained by the sagacity of a cultivated ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... languishing abandonment that we remarked just now in the costume of La belle Hamilton. The entire person is concealed, except the tip of one foot, the hands, the head and throat, and just enough of the bust to confess the existence of its feminine charms, without exposing them; both limbs and trunk are amply draped; and yet how plainly it can be seen that there is a well-developed, untortured woman underneath those tissues! The waist, girdled in at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... these gifts she used—for what? She made Percy happy, she was charming and kind, clear-sighted, indulgent (if a little cynical), and always amusing; full of dash and spirit, and yet with the most feminine softness, and above all that invaluable instinct, always, for doing and saying the right thing ... and (he knew instinctively) a genius ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... which fall so gracefully on the young. Engrossed with her books and studies, pursuits noble and ennobling in themselves, but degraded from their high and holy purpose when cultivated to the exclusion of the lovely, feminine virtues, Mittie was almost a stranger beneath her ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... so tall as yourself, say six feet or so, with a slight, feminine beard—no? you shake your head; well, smooth-faced and rosy, immense breadth of shoulders—ah! I have often pictured to myself that ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... which they entered appeared to be the bishop's own, or a guest chamber. At least, there was no suggestion of the feminine in the furniture, or in the ecclesiastical pictures that adorned the walls. Even the military brushes on the bureau possessed an episcopal dignity of size and weight, and the two tall candles in their massive silver candlesticks glimmered ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... child upon the sea, in the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native innocence and refinement of the author. Nor can we be mistaken respecting the essential purity of his character, disregarding the apology of the manners of the age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness, which Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, but does not equal, are peculiar to him. We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in woman, though not the appreciation ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... by some Barbarians at the Council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom. i. p. 440.) But the existence of the Marianites is denied by the candid Beausobre, (Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 532;) and he derives the mistake from the word Roxah, the Holy Ghost, which in some Oriental tongues is of the feminine gender, and is figuratively styled the mother of Christ in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... sometimes attributed to fear, sometimes to cruelty, sometimes to arrogance; she would not believe that he saw in her only a person otherwise indifferent to him, whom he wished to accustom to the mode of life which he and his friends believed to be the right path, pleasing in the sight of God. Love, feminine vanity, the need of approval, her own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... feminine pronoun in his exclamation recorded above. I did not think it referred to ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... the opening chapters of Proverbs the wise describe the character and value of that wisdom which represents their teaching as a whole. In chapters 8 and 9 "Wisdom" is personified. Inasmuch as the Hebrew word for "wisdom" is feminine, it is spoken of as a woman. Chapter 9 describes, in a form intended to arrest the attention of the most inattentive, the feast that Wisdom offers to her guests. This is contrasted with Folly's banquet, and the consequences to ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... this must be some Arabic idiom for the Eternal Feminine, but I only looked vague ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... products of a dozen other Sov political divisions including Russia, were of the best, but the denizens of the West-world Embassy drank bourbon and Scotch, or at most the products of the vines of California. The styles of Budapest rivaled those of Paris and Rome, New York and Hollywood, but a feminine employee of the embassy wouldn't have been caught dead in local fashions. It was a home away from home, an oasis of the West ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... desultory counting on the sympathy that had helped her before; but she had been unfortunate in the times for her visits. On the first occasion Mrs. Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard; and on the second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to set out the plants or to take them in. Callers ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000 to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing considerably ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... similarity between the persons and manners of this young nobleman and the baronet's heir. The beauty of Chatterton was almost feminine; his skin, his color, his eyes, his teeth, were such as many a belle had sighed after; and his manners were bashful and retiring. Yet an intimacy had commenced between the boys at school, which ripened into friendship ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... that he most gathers up his forces and puts forth all his strength. What of her eyes? Well, her eyes were bright enough, large enough, well set in her head. They were clever eyes too—nay, honest eyes also, which is better. But they were not softly feminine eyes. They never hid themselves beneath their soft fringes when too curiously looked into, as a young girl at her window half hides herself behind her curtain. They were bold eyes, I was going to say, but the word would ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... The feminine element was lacking in charm. The Countess Foder, red-haired, small, and lively, enveloped in lace to the tip of her little pointed nose, looked like a squirrel with a cold in its head. Baroness Huchenard, a lady of no particular age and with ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... into the boat. When he had landed this young priest, who had a somewhat feminine cast of features, a clear eye, and a grave manner, Gilliatt perceived that he was holding out a sovereign in a very white hand. Gilliatt moved the hand gently away. There was a pause. Then the young ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... her. Her eyes haunted him when they were separated; they dogged him when they were together. More than once he was moved to rush over and take her in his arms, and implore her to tell him all, to trust him with everything. At such times the thought of holding the slim, warm, ineffably feminine body in his arms was most distracting. He rather feared for himself. If such a thing were to happen,—and it might happen if the impulse seized him at the psychological moment of least resistance,—the result in all probability would ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... As Rnine had foretold, the duel had not lasted longer than a few minutes but it was she who had succumbed, thanks to her feminine nerves and at the very moment when she felt entitled to believe that she ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... judgment, she had now the relief of an assurance that Miss Derrick was not at all a proper person to entertain as a guest, on whatever terms. The incident of the railway station proved her to be utterly lacking in self-respect, in feminine modesty, even if her behaviour merited no darker description. Emmeline could now face with confidence the scene from which she had shrunk; not only was it a duty to insist upon Miss Derrick's departure, it would ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing

... Culture had not as yet penetrated beyond a very narrow circle. Both writers and readers belonged exclusively to the official caste. It is remarkable that a very large and important part of the best literature which Japan has produced was written by women. A good share of the Nara poetry is of feminine authorship, and, in the Heian period, women took a still more conspicuous part in maintaining the honour of the native literature. The two greatest works which have come down from Heian time are both by women.* This was no doubt ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the beautiful ivory skin which goes with red hair. Her eyes, though they were under the shadow of her hat, and he could not be certain, he diagnosed as green, or maybe blue, or possibly grey. Not that it mattered, for he had a catholic taste in feminine eyes. So long as they were large and bright, as were the specimens under his immediate notice, he was not the man to quibble about a point of colour. Her nose was small, and on the very tip of it there was a tiny freckle. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... the truth, and inspired by the resentment of Napoleon's courtiers, has slandered this sovereign. Those who knew her will restore, not the stoical, theatric glory which was demanded of her, but her real nature.... The alleged emptiness of her silence hid feminine thoughts and mysteries of feeling which transported her far from this court. Magnificent though cruel exile!... She could not pretend anything, either during the days of her grandeur, nor after her husband's overthrow; that was her crime. The theatrical world of the court ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... remarkable woman, pays her a high tribute in The Study of Sociology. After explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It is frankly a ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... And, with this rather feminine mode of stating the case, she darted into the dusky, fire-lighted parlor, from whence, unseen, she could reconnoitre the hall. Mr. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... fine affair that Dexie works at when she sits up with me at night. Where is it, Dexie? Bring it out and let us all have a look at it," said Mr. Sherwood, who had listened in silence to the discussion, and did not wish Traverse to think that Dexie was ignorant of this particularly feminine employment. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... other Philosophers, general discouragement was the order of the day. It was moved and seconded that Coxhead be kicked for having made "amnis" feminine, and having translated the French "impasse" as "instep." And Trimble was temporarily suspended from the service of the Conversation Club because he had put a decimal dot in the wrong place. Public feeling ran ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... Inigo Jones had just completed for him. My lady languished at his side, permitted him to encircle her with a protecting arm, and for a moment lay heavily against him. He caught her violently to him, and now her ladyship, hitherto so yielding, with true feminine contrariness set herself to resist him. A scuffle ensued between them. She broke from him at last, and sped swift as a doe across the lawn towards the lights of the great house, his Grace in pursuit ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond classification or description. And the people—the American Southerners; rich whites, whites well-to-do, poor white trash; good country folks, valley farmers; mountaineers—darkies, and the motley feminine horde that the soldier draws the world over—all moving along the road as far as he could see, and interspersed here and there in the long, low cloud of dust with a clanking troop of horse or a red rumbling battery—all coming to see the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... the hard metallic glitter of the Californian skies. Sometimes, in her isolation, the long, cylindrical vault she inhabited seemed, like some vast sea-shell, to become musical with the murmurings of the distant sea. So completely had it taken the place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in quantity. After the first surprise of admiration her father's lodgers ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,—partly respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... and unique position. What would this present adventure lead to? Unless his new friend, Mary Deane, examined the vest he had asked her to take care of for him, she would not discover who he was or from whence he came. Would she examine it?—would she unrip the lining, just out of feminine curiosity, and sew it up again, pretending that she had not touched it, after the "usual way of women"? No! He was sure,—absolutely sure—of her integrity. What? In less than an hour's acquaintance with her, would he swear to her honesty? ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... which Avalokita became a goddess are obscure. The Indian images of him are not feminine, although his sex is hardly noticed before the tantric period. He is not a male deity like Krishna, but a strong, bright spirit and like the Christian archangels above sexual distinctions. No female form of him is reported from Tibet and this ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... ardent, feverish embrace, responding every now and then to the hot kisses he rained on her mouth and neck. Through her thin dress he could feel her soft form pressing against him. From her neck arose a delicious aroma, a kind of feminine incense that still further aroused ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... be possible than between this dare-devil son of Anak and the cultured, almost feminine Poniatowski; but Catherine loved, above all things, variety, and here it was in startling abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a common soldier in ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... by, the song came to an end; and then, all at once, there were several feminine voices, talking airily and cheerfully, with now and then a merry burst of laughter, such as you may always hear when three or four young women ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mantle in her cheek; her eyes would beam, till they appeared as if, like bright planets, they could almost cast a shadow; and dimples, before concealed, would show themselves when she indulged in her silvery laugh. Although her form was commanding, still she was very feminine: there was great attraction in her face, even when in repose—she was cold, but ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... said Tiny, with feminine contempt. "You can't plait. What's the good of asking boys to do anything? There! it's done at last. Now go and ask Mother if we may go.—Will you let me come, Doctor," she inquired, "if ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... first topics on which I heard conversation turning in America was that of a very interesting book called Main Street, which involves many of these questions of the modern industrial and the eternal feminine. It is simply the story, or perhaps rather the study than the story, of a young married woman in one of the multitudinous little towns on the great central plains of America; and of a sort of struggle between ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... a conveyance had been with Helen when he took her home from a party. She was then about seventeen years old. And that night she had coaxed him to marry her before he left to go to war. Had her feminine instinct been infallibly right? Would marrying her have saved her from what Blair had so ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... still there, being composed purely of the excitement of meeting a young human creature apparently so akin to themselves, but different with that mysterious difference which nature sets between masculine and feminine attributes of mind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... the obvious distinction of male, and female, and inanimate, while it has left its nouns without any mark characteristic of gender. The same thing must necessarily happen to any language by abolishing the distinction of masculine and feminine in its attributives. If all languages had been constructed on this plan, it may confidently be affirmed that the grammatical term gender would never have come into use. The compliment intended, and due to the English, might have been more correctly expressed, by saying that "it is the only ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... (To himself.) Can't meet my eye. Good! I shall go on treating her distantly for a little. I wonder if I look indifferent enough from behind? Shall I cross one foot? Better not—she may have begun sketching me. If she imagines I'm susceptible to feminine flattery of this palpable kind, she'll—how her voice shook, though, when she spoke. Poor girl, she's afraid she offended me by laughing—and I did think she had more sense than to—but I mustn't be too hard on her. I'm afraid she's already beginning to think too much ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various

... the merry jest?" was Baby Van Rensselaer's inquiry, the natural result of a feminine ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... did God create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not till the world at once With men as angels, without feminine?" ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... again, how preference in a writer is established. Everyone feels that Sophocles prefers Antigone to Ismene; Ismene is a mere sketch of gentle feminine weakness; while Antigone is a great portrait of the revoltee, the first appearance indeed in literature of the "new woman," and the place she fills in the drama, and the ideal qualities attributed to her girlhood—alike ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... palm of unlimited homage. Lady Carbery was a regular beauty, and publicly known for such; both were fine figures, and apparently not older than twenty-six; but in her Irish friend people felt something more thoroughly artless and feminine—for the masculine understanding of Lady Carbery in some way communicated its commanding expression to her deportment. I reported to Lord Massey, in terms of unexceptionable decorum, those flattering expressions of homage, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... [The capote (feminine of capot, masculine diminutive of cope, cape) was a long shaggy cloak or overcoat, with a hood, worn by soldiers, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... to be an apple. One may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... we had formed from the report of preceding visitors; and though here and there was to be seen a young person who might be esteemed comely, we saw few who, in fact, could be called beauties; yet they possess eminent feminine graces: their faces are never darkened with a scowl, or covered with a cloud of sullenness or suspicion. Their manners are affable and engaging; their step easy, firm, and graceful; their behaviour free and unguarded; always boundless in generosity to each other, and to strangers; their ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... It is the fem. of the Adj. [Hebrew: pliT], the [Hebrew: -i] of which has arisen from [Hebrew: —] by means of lengthening; hence it is that [Hebrew: plTh] is thrice formed without [Hebrew: -i]. It is, then, an adjective of intransitive signification. Now it is true that, by means of the feminine termination, adjectives are changed into abstract nouns, but never into such as indicate an action; but always into such only for which, in Latin and Greek, the neuter of the adjective might be used. This, however, is here inadmissible. 2. To this ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... of eleven syllables, is alone fit for the drama, but this does not seem to me to be by any means proved. This verse, in variety and metrical signification, is greatly inferior to the English and German rhymeless iambic, from its uniform feminine termination, and from there being merely an accentuation in Italian, without any syllabic measure. Moreover, from the frequent transition of the sense from verse to verse, according to every possible division, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... representation; but it is doubtful to the barbarian whether good can come of women's mixing in parliamentary elections at which they have no vote. Of course, with us a like interference would be taken jocosely, ironically; it would, at the bottom, be a good joke, amusing from the tendency of the feminine temperament to acts of circus in moments of high excitement; but whether the Englishmen regard it so, the English, alone know. They are much more serious than we, and perhaps they take it as a fit manifestation of the family principle which is the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... before us, as the fruits of that species of domestic taxation known as "the presents" are spread out on the piano at certain wedding-festivals. We are led back to first principles, to the early married life of the parent Vallandighams. The mother is portrayed with a vigorous feminine pencil, and certainly looks extremely well on canvas. Clement's relations to her are shown to be exemplary. There is excuse for this in the attacks which have been made upon him in the relation of son. But upon what grounds are Clement's sisters' homes invaded? Because a man is disloyal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... make further search, the latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little wainscoted room, which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed, though the name, in deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had been altered, it still retained much of its former aspect. From the little feminine trifles lying about, scraps of unfinished crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh flowers in the vases, he gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve frequented. He recognised her cage of love-birds hanging in the window; the cottage piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... taken a bluer tinge. The spiderweb, touched by a moonbeam, looks as if sifting silver dust. The PHEASANT-HEN comes from the tree and follows CHANTECLER with little short feminine steps.] ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... it was no feminine attractions that kept me. There were some fifteen or twenty girls and, like everyone else, they were very kind to me but, so far as I was able to judge, not one of them was prettier, or I should ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... another cigarette. "I think the sex feminine has marriage on the brain," I exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. "My Aunt Jessica was worrying me about it the day before yesterday. As if it were ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... motioned me to the cushion on his right and the doctor to his left. Eighteen other guests now reclined upon their cushions to left and right, so that we were all arranged in a direct line, facing the lower terrace whence came the feminine buzz. Directly opposite each of us was an empty cushion, but ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... straight away." But he looked again, and could not help looking more than many times again, so piercing (as an ancient poet puts it) is the shaft from the eyes of the female women. And Insie was especially a female girl—which has now ceased to be tautology—so feminine were her walk, and way, and sudden variety of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... slowly, and while he was meditating a reply, his wife issued various commands, and went through some intricate feminine manoeuvres, with the effect of increased fluffiness on the baby's part. In five minutes she was feeding the child with warm milk from a spoon, and proclaiming that he ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... add that his subscription-lists flourished, his bazaars prospered, his missions and retreats overflowed with feminine money, and his Church was overloaded with floral tributes. The brutal tribe of men, however, sneered at him, and perversely suspected his motives; nor were they reconciled to him when they saw him relieving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various

... companion modestly declined their services, and told her cousin, with a little blush, that she was accustomed to undress herself ever since she had lost the services of her dearly beloved, who had put her out of conceit with feminine fingers by his gentle ways; that these preparations brought back the pretty speeches he used to make, and his merry pranks while playing the lady's-maid; and that to her injury, the memory of all these things brought the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in the Spectator would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one, the derogatory language used by men ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... appearance reminded me of Catherine's petite bande, so attractive did it seem. I do not know whether this is a common thing, but I never saw such a troop before in company with a regiment. They wear a costume, half feminine half military; have short dresses of grey cloth—the colour of the men's great coats—sitting close to their shape, very full in the skirt, and with cuffs turned up with red facings, red trowsers, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... feminine magnetism thrilled him again. It was so strange and unexpected from Miss Mallory—a breath from the old Dream Ranges. It quickened him to the race of women, even to the great work, as he had not been quickened since the night he looked ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... awoke an interest in my mind for the lad. As I left the shop, I met him at the door with a large bucket of water in his hand—too heavy for his strength. I looked at him more narrowly than I had ever done before. There was a feminine delicacy about every feature of his face, unusual in boys who ordinarily belong to the station he was filling. His eyes, too, had a softer expression, and his brow was broader and fairer. The intentness with which I looked at him, caused ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... understand that Mr. Hoopdriver was not one of your fast young men. If he had been King Lemuel, he could not have profited more by his mother's instructions. He regarded the feminine sex as something to bow to and smirk at from a safe distance. Years of the intimate remoteness of a counter leave their mark upon a man. It was an adventure for him to take one of the Young Ladies of the establishment to church on a Sunday. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... ruins, with fires beginning at various points, and the water-supply interrupted. I was fortunate enough to board the only train of cars—a very small one—that got up to the city; fortunate enough also to escape in the evening by the only train that left it. This gave me and my valiant feminine escort some four hours of observation. My business is with "subjective" phenomena exclusively; so I will say nothing of the material ruin that greeted us on every hand—the daily papers and the weekly journals have done full justice to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Stitt, had gone into the house and up to his room, and Obed, after seeing him safely on his way, had returned to the club. But, instead of entering immediately, he stood in the Higgins doorway, thinking, and frowning as he thought. And the subject of his thought was the idol of feminine East Harniss, the "old-school gentleman," Major Cuthbertson ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... beating. How dared she call Michael "dear"? How dared she intrude herself uninvited upon their simple life? Her beauty, her foolish feminine clothes, angered her. She hated Millicent's fine skin, which was, even in the desert heat, as poreless as a baby's. It was a wonderful skin for a grown person, let alone for a woman of Millicent Mervill's age. Meg thought of the dried mummy's lips. One day that ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... many of them competing at tournaments. I think the two clubs I have mentioned are the only two where we even get a bathroom! Some tournaments provide a draughty tent for our use. Moreover, there is generally only one dressing-room, and feminine spectators often crowd round the one looking-glass, staring at the players as if they were animals on show! It is sometimes even impossible to sit down to rest after a hard and ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... strong in Githa; and she felt an indescribable awe when Hilda stood before her, the red light playing on the Vala's stern marble face, and contrasting robes of funereal black. But, with all her awe, Githa, who, not educated like her daughter Edith, had few feminine resources, loved the visits of her mysterious kinswoman. She loved to live her youth over again in discourse on the wild customs and dark rites of the Dane; and even her awe itself had the charm ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... opened his eyes again he was lying with his wounds already bathed and roughly bandaged. Plainly he was in a woman's room, for its clean particularity and its huge old four-poster bed spread with a craftily wrought "coverlet" proclaimed a feminine proprietorship. A freshly built fire roared on a generous hearth, giving a sense of space broadening and narrowing with fickle ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... a man than a woman, and, never having been to school nor mixed much with other girls of her own age, she was free from all those small, petty habits of mind, that littleness of mental vision that so mars and dwarfs the ordinary feminine character. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... cheeks under a cloth cap caught on awry. As the ponies sought a path at a snail's pace through the sharp flints, she showed in a thousand ways how high the gaiety of her animal spirits had mounted. She sang airy little pieces of songs. She uttered single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous pantomime the scene of the mock lynching, until ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... passed over the country when the nature and acceptance of the Japanese Ultimatum became generally known. The Chinese, always an emotional people responding with quasi- feminine volubility to oppressive acts, cried aloud at the ignominy of the diplomacy which had so cruelly crucified them. One and all declared that the day of shame which had been so harshly imposed upon them would ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... animals clattered noisily, alarming the people of the neighborhood, who came to the windows and to the balconies to satisfy their curiosity. Shutters opened with a grating sound and various faces, almost all feminine, appeared above and below. By the time Pepe Rey had reached the threshold of the house of Polentinos many and diverse comments had been ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... best," he told her, "would have resorted to little feminine ways of humbling such a blunderer as I have been: they would have spurned him for weeks; made him come to them on his knees; perhaps have thought that his brutality of a moment outweighed all his love. When I saw you coming to meet me half-way—oh, Grizel, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... the aged and snappy old gentleman clambered aboard the train that morning suddenly occurred to the station-master, only to be put aside in an instant; for it seemed impossible that he could have been an impostor. The girl, too, looked so natural, so feminine, so ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... of herself, shone qualities of a superior order. The little hand and foot, so beautiful and delicate, the latter just peeping from the dress under which it was usually concealed, appeared as if formed expressly to adorn a taste that was every way feminine and alluring. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... feminine of Kurmi, the name of a widely spread and most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in Bundelkhand, with the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... a case as the last three sentences,—when the antecedent includes both masculine and feminine, or is a distributive word, taking in each of many persons,—the preferred method is to put the pronoun following in the masculine singular; if the antecedent is neuter, preceded by a distributive, the pronoun will be ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... Shallow Predilection Repression of Preference Utility versus Sentiment A Story of African Love Similarity of Individuals and Sexes Primary and Secondary Sexual Characters Fastidious Sensuality is not Love Two Stories of Indian Love Feminine Ideals Superior to Masculine Sex in Body and Mind True Femininity and its Female Enemies ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... but in vain. With feminine quickness she utilized the incident to avoid a situation she evidently found full of difficulty, and at 7.10, with the memory of a light kiss on my lips and her God-speed in my ears I was in a taxi driving to the docks in a blinding rain-storm—and ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... the naval officer, sharply. Then a queer look came into his face as a suspicion of the truth flashed into his mind. He was about to speak when his feminine ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... tone. "If I'd said Mrs. Blackwood was 'a host in herself,' it would have been considered a delicate compliment; and yet when I call her a 'party,' which certainly means a host, you two jump on me. There's no accounting for the eccentricities of the feminine character." Then, as his head sank back, "I do believe somebody's been pulling the feathers out of this sofa pillow; there can't be two dozen left in it. I suppose Betty's been making an Indian head-dress for herself. Just poke that history under ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... still regard her As feminine in her degree, Who has been my unkind bombarder Year after year, in grief and glee, Year after year, with oaken tree; And yet betweenwhiles my laudator In terms astonishing to me - To the Right ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... former device of dressmakers. Fancy any one graceful in such a costume!" The point is certainly well taken, and I can only reply that while the ladies of the twentieth century are lovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery in accenting feminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers enables me to maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... in the end she shall yield to a perfect and absolute something, Which I then for myself shall behold, and not another,— Which amid fondest endearments, meantime I forget not, forsake not. Ah, ye feminine souls, so loving and so exacting, Since we cannot escape, must we even submit to deceive you? Since, so cruel is truth, sincerity shocks and revolts you, Will you have us your slaves to lie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... and the stores annually supply 1,300 of these useful but essentially fugitive articles. The men are clothed by their village tailors and bootmakers chiefly, so that the masculine wardrobe is represented in the accounts of the stores less extensively than the feminine. But the Anzin miners nevertheless annually invest in scarves and cravats to the number of more than 4,000. Each man on going into the employ of the company receives, as I have said, a complete mining outfit, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... make her pass, fluttering, from distrust into an oppressive extreme of confidence. But he had an indefinable sense that the person who was testing that strong young eyesight of hers in the dim candle-light was less readily beguiled from her mysterious feminine preconceptions. Miss Garland, according to Cecilia's judgment, as Rowland remembered, had not a countenance to inspire a sculptor; but it seemed to Rowland that her countenance might fairly inspire a man who was far from being a sculptor. She was not pretty, as the eye of habit judges prettiness, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms; for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young female—less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even an improper motive—one of those over-powering passions one reads about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear, naughty, departed Lord Byron—would have been somehow more ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... sideways, and fell like a Hussar's jacket from one shoulder. Her hair stood like a dark halo about her little face, making it seem smaller and younger, almost too small for the magnificent eyes that lit it. Geoffrey, tolerably well versed in feminine attractions, said to himself that he had never ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller

... of England! Not in repugnance nor in scorn Our spirit holds you, Nor would our pen abase you More than it must—to call you feminine! Exemption I am sure you would not claim, Being subject to the common influence; Shining on earth as do the stars in heaven. Your sov'reign beauty, ladies, our austerity Cannot depreciate, nor would do so, For we have not in view a superhuman kind, Such poison,[H] therefore, far from ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... see a man sewing, Charley? I don't. I don't believe that their great muscular arms were intended to wield a needle, especially when so many feminine fingers are forced to be idle for want of employment; so I never like to see a tailor.—Oh, yes, I do, too. I came very near ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... came a step and a little rustling of feminine draperies, the small door opened, and Rachel entered, with her hand extended, and a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to the porch and peeked out (as they say at Polpier). Up the street the women stood clacking the news just as though it were a week-day and the boats had brought in a famous haul. Feminine gossip in Polpier is not conducted in groups, as the men conduct theirs on the Quay. By tradition each housewife takes post on her own threshold-slate, and knits while she talks with her neighbours to right and ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... dressmaker; and in Cheeryble Brothers, the golden-hearted old merchants who take Nicholas into their counting-house. Then for single characters commend me to Mrs. Nickleby, whose logic, which some cynics would call feminine, is positively sublime in its want of coherence; and to John Browdie, the honest Yorkshire cornfactor, as good a fellow almost as Dandie Dinmont, the Border yeoman whom Scott made immortal. The high-life personages are far less successful. Dickens ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... took this as permission; with feminine precision Mrs. Riddel walked about fifty yards and then stopped. "I told you I wasn't going far," she said sweetly, as she held ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs



Words linked to "Feminine" :   masculine, unstressed, femininity, powder-puff, fair, feminineness, womanlike, maidenly, matronly, music, gender, maidenlike, womanly



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