"Gawky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 1819: this was the velocipede, or as it was then called "the hobby," the grandfather of the bicycle and tricycle of our day. A tall gawky perched on the summit of a lofty bicycle, with an enormous wheel gyrating between a couple of spindle shanks capped with enormous crab-shells, is a sufficiently familiar and ridiculous object in our ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... said, "what an overgrown poor young thing you are! But we must all go through the gawky age; we must each of us take our turn. Maisie is just through her bad time, but when she was fourteen, wasn't she a show just! You're fourteen, ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... with, he's the most perfect specimen of manhood I've ever beheld. He's abnormally big without the slightest suggestion of being either too big or awkward. He's simply magnificent. Most men of that size are just leggy and gawky: he is neither. Again, other men built as he, are usually rather brainless and weak, or probably made so much of by women that they become wrapped up in themselves, and are always expecting admiration. Alymer Hermon has the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... scraggy ones, now come In turn; the lean, ill-favored, gawky, bald, Long-nosed, uncouth, raw-boned, and those with scald And freckled, frowsy, ricketty and squat, The stumpy, bandy-legged, gaunt, each bought A man; though ugly as a toad, they sold, For every man with her received his gold. The heaped-up gold ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages—before Nancy had opened her blue eyes on this naughty world—when he was a gawky, freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church with Mildred, the eldest daughter of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... three, we were to demand the assistance of our competitors, who should be ready to enforce us, or oppose anything that might be undertaken for the master's relief. One of my principal assistants was called Jeremy Gawky, son and heir of a wealthy gentleman in the neighbourhood; and the name of the other, Hugh Strap, the cadet of a family which had given shoemakers to the village time out of mind. I had once saved Gawky's life, by plunging into a river and dragging him on shore, when he was on the point ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... all, however, was little Eva herself. He could not see enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human being of the noblest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... first of Edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows, who appreciated him. Mediocrity had only seen the gawky stripling, with his moonstruck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet. Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing brow the fire of a suppressed genius. He was then just twenty-one. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... climbed the hill the reaction from the excitement of his late adventure suddenly made him very miserable indeed, so that he had an immediate impulse to cry, but he stood still in the middle of the street and made fists with his hands and called himself "a damned gawky idiot," words that he had admired in the mouth of Sam Figgis some days before. "Gawky" was certainly the last thing that he was, but it was a nice queer word, and it helped ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Tit, "only to think of it; such a tiny body as I am to have twelve children, and all the while that great gawky, Mrs Stockdove, only to have one, for the other she had rolled out of the nest ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... mutual friend to give them an introduction; their regard for decorum and etiquette was too great to permit them to speak otherwise than with their eyes. Millington had kept three terms, when I arrived at —— College, a shy and gawky freshman; we had been previously acquainted, and he, pitying perhaps my youth and inexperience, patronized his playmate, and I became his chum. For some time I was at a loss to account for sundry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... I but half comprehended his meaning, but the rapture of his eye infected me like a glisk of the sun. He was a plain, gawky, nervous man, very freckled at the hands, and as poor a leg in the kilt as well could be. He was fronting us with the unspoken superiority of the fowl on its own midden, but he had a ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... make short work of your gawky bumpkins;" he remarked to Jack as the recruits loitered about the wide, shaded streets, waiting to be forwarded ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... if they had been emptied of air, a pompous nose that drooped till it very nearly touched a projecting underlip like a bracket, giving her an expression of determined contempt which she very certainly had never felt. In short, she suggested the absurd idea of a solemn, gawky Marlborough ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... all the luck," remarked an enamelled dame, whose bridge and dressmakers' debts were on a par with those of her three daughters who had safely, oh! quite, but most unsuccessfully survived many seasons, "I wonder how Susie managed it? Gawky young miss, isn't she? Just out ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... much of society. Well, since she is not gawky, I like her better than if she were blase. Anything but your blase girls," he observed to himself, with a consciousness that he was an ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... frivolous, no insignificant portion of a large court, at his feet through his wife,—it was observed that this timid, shy, self-concentrated prince, this precise (piece of) virtue, this (bit of) misplaced learning, this gawky man, a stranger in his own house, constrained in everything,—it was observed, I say, that he was showing himself by degrees, unfolding himself little by little, presenting himself to society in moderation, and that he was unembarrassed, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Flamingo's crimson silk gown," said good-natured Mrs. Sedley. "What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more graceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of them. Such ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... calloused-handed fishermen; loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers; athletes from the city foot-ball and hockey teams; and gawky, long-armed farmers joined the First Newfoundland Regiment at the outbreak of war. A rigid medical examination sorted out the best of them, and ten months of bayonet fighting, physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches over Scottish hills had molded these into trim, erect, bronzed ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... all our hours and classes soon to suit the convenience of the day-boarders. That'll be the next move. I know it, because I heard him ask that gawky chap they call Mason if he could stay on Wednesday evenings for the dancing class. If he could, indeed! That's the way ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... at the open stable door, his grey-bearded chin resting on his big brown hand, his eyes staring meditatively in front of him. It was a breezy, sunny autumn day, and all the world about him was astir with life; gawky yellow-legged fowls pecked and scratched round his feet with prodigious activity, calves were bleating in the adjacent pens, while the very pigs were scuttling about their styes, squealing the while as though it were supper-time. The wind whistled blithely round the corners of the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Grown into a gawky chap of sixteen, Peter didn't impress people too favorably. They felt for him the instinctive distrust of the conservative and commercial mind for the free and artistic one. The Peter Champneyses of the world challenge the ideal of commercial success by their utter ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... like a park, and I began stalking in it, first at the eland, as I wanted to see if they corresponded with those I shot in Usagara; but the gawky giraffes, always in the way, gave the alarm, and drove all but two of the buffaloes away. At these two I now went with my only rifle, leaving the servants and savages behind. They were out in the open grass feeding ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was the fashion in my young days. The motto was, 'Children are to be seen and not heard.' I dodged visitors always; when I met them by any chance I was always a fool with them, blinking and stammering like anything. When I was first at the hospital among men I was gawky until quite by chance I discovered that whisky made me graceful, stopped the stammering, gave me a surprising flow of eloquence and made me feel a damned fine chap. Naturally I went at it like anything, and of course after each burst was more nervous than ever. It plays havoc with ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the nursery was "Chany," the under nursemaid. Gawky, sleek, and black, she sat flat upon the floor, her large, well-shod feet turned to the fire, a picture of ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... figures through the blinding snow, Even old Mr. Clifford went out to question them. "Yes, Mr. Burt come up in de mawnin' an' stirred us all up right smart, slashed down a tree hisself to show a new gawky hand dat's cuttin' by de cord how to 'arn his salt; den he put out wid his rafle in a bee-line toward de riber. Dat's de last we seed ob him;" and Abram went stolidly on to unhitch and care for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... everlasting plains, and the narrrow streets and high buildings irk their sensibilities. For this reason, and perhaps because they recognised their deficienceies, they shunned Seleucia; and built themselves lumbering straggling gawky Ctesiphon across the Tigris to be their chief capital;—for they had many; not abiding to be long in one place, but gadding about as of old. Still, Greek culture was not to be denied. They coined money, copying the inscriptions on the coins of the Seleucids, and copyting them ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... minutes later the service was over, and the congregation sauntered out down the aisle. A gawky group of men remained loitering by the church door: one of them called to Anthony; but, nodding curtly, he passed on, and strode away down the road, across the grey upland meadows, towards home. As soon as he had breasted the hill, however, ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the freshest thing imaginable; he was overtall and gawky, his cheeks were as delicately rosy as apple blossoms, and his smile was an epitome of ingenuous interest and frank wonder. It was as if some quality of especial fineness, lingering unspotted in Hunter Kinemon, had found ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this house into something like order. I had a great mind to bring her with me; but I can send for her. She can be here by Monday or Tuesday. I told her to be in readiness, and to have her boxes packed. My dear, I wish you would not poke out your chin so much. How old are you? Oh, sixteen—a very gawky age. Now then, that I am refreshed and rested, I think that we'll just go round ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... the room. He came in looking as though he had the utmost difficulty not to burst out laughing again. Behind him Razumihin strode in gawky and awkward, shamefaced and red as a peony, with an utterly crestfallen and ferocious expression. His face and whole figure really were ridiculous at that moment and amply justified Raskolnikov's laughter. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ordered some of our cards at Black's, the stationers. I ordered twenty-five of each, which will last us for a good long time. In the evening, Lupin brought in Harry Mutlar, Miss Mutlar's brother. He was rather a gawky youth, and Lupin said he was the most popular and best amateur in the club, referring to the "Holloway Comedians." Lupin whispered to us that if we could only "draw out" Harry a bit, he would ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... was low on the horizon when they got there. In the little shanty that served as a station, loafing and wishing for something to do, was a red-headed, gawky youth whose business it was to set signals and listen at a telegraph key for the orders that went flashing ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy—for it ain't anything else, though he's good meanin' enough—that happened to fall sick in MY house, and coax and cosset him, and wrap him in white cotton, and mother him, and sister him, and Aunt Sukey him, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... beauty. Some of d'Annunzio's novels were a revelation, dazzling. And who that began even "Il Fuoco" could resist it? How adult, how subtle, how (in the proper signification) refined, seems the sexuality of d'Annunzio after the timid, gawky, infantile, barbaric sexuality of our "island story"! People are not far wrong on the Continent when they say, as they do say, that English novelists cannot deal with an Englishwoman—or could not up till a few years ago. They never get ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... they have said is always pregnant. Critics outnumber them—though the battle is really a matter of quality, not quantity. There is Da Vinci. For his complete writings some of us would sacrifice miles of gawky pale and florid mediaeval paintings. What we have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom is prophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip Vasari, a very biassed critic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge in what is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a half-dozen blades of grass of varying lengths and folded them carefully. Then he held one, tightly closed, chubby hand first to Bill and then to John. The leaders compared their prizes. Silvey gave an exultant yell and beckoned to a gawky, loosely jointed lad who stood a little apart from ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... tight coat. He was just of that awkward age when boys fancy themselves men, and men are not prepared to lower themselves to their level. Ladies get on better with them than men: either the ladies are more tolerant of twaddle, or their discerning eyes see in the gawky youth the germ of future usefulness. George was on capital terms with himself. He was the oracle of Mr. Latherington's school, where he was not only head boy and head swell, but a considerable authority on sporting matters. He took in Bell's Life, which he read from beginning to end, and 'noted ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... his plate into his lap, puts muscle into the crushing of his meringue, and tosses off the warm beaker in his finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee into his boot drying at the fire,—a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule, slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Patty, dainty, graceful and sweet, was the very antithesis of tall, gawky Azalea, with her countrified dress and badly made black shoes. Her careless air, too, was unattractive,—for it was not the nonchalance of experience, but the unselfconsciousness of sheer ignorance of ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... gawky; he neither sat erect nor lounged—he slumped spineless. Big spectacles were in style now, but Pop's big spectacles were just out of it. His face was like a parchment that had been left out in the rain and had dried carelessly ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... dress of crimson poplin that stood out from her in organ-like folds; and Linda, whom Ann Eliza had remembered as an uncouth child with a sly look about the eyes, surprised her by a sudden blossoming into feminine grace such as sometimes follows on a gawky girlhood. The Hochmullers, in fact, struck the dominant note in the entertainment. Beside them Evelina, unusually pale in her grey cashmere and white bonnet, looked like a faintly washed sketch beside a ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... at a big dinner, he announced casually that the Directors had shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the Accountant line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley, Accountant, was a MOST curious animal—a long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshireman, full of the savage self-conceit that blossoms only in the best county in England. Arrogance was a mild word for the mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He had worked himself up, after seven years, to a Cashier's position in a Huddersfield Bank; and all his experience ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... out of the doorway and came slowly toward them, eyeing the two from the Sawtooth curiously while he chewed tobacco. His hands rested on his hips, his thumbs hooked inside his overalls; a gawky pose that fitted well his colorless personality,—and left his right hand close to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... "How much did you pay for that?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... were cut short by a tap at the door; a long, gawky youth, with a budding moustache, entered and slouched over to a chair. He was young Isaacstein, son of the Tarrong storekeeper, a would-be sportsman, would-be gambler, would-be lady-killer, would-be everything, who only succeeded in making himself a cheap bar-room ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... a tall, gawky youth clad in dull brown, faded garments, without mittens, without overshoes, his hands purple, but with a long, low, narrow sled as tall as himself. His left hand clasped the front, his right hand the back. The sled slanted across his body. A dozen swift steps he ran forward flung ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child, Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of establishing, by practice, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... won't hev nothin' tew say tew him," said the girl. "That gawky-lookin' John Barker 'pears tew be hangin' raound her consid'able. 'Twould be kind er funny ef she should like him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... in an attitude that betokened the utmost admiration for both parties to the tete-a-tete. Under ordinary conditions,—that is to say, if Vavasour's existence depended on his own exertions,—Helen's eyes would have dwelt on a gawky youth endowed with a certain pertness that might in time have brought him from behind the counter of a drapery store to the wider arena of the floor. As it was, a reasonably large income gave him ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... land of "miscreants." These people may exhaust their slang, and make blackguards of themselves, but they cannot defile us. And as for the suggestion to exclude slaveholders from your London clubs, we scout it. Many of us, indeed, do go to London, and we have seen your breed of gawky lords, both there and here, but it never entered into our conceptions to look on them as better than ourselves. The American slaveholders, collectively or individually, ask no favors of any man or race who tread the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to take it; but,] my dear, what could I do? Did not Mrs. Catgut say it was the most fashionable; and if I had not taken it, was not that awkward, gawky Sally Slender ready to ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler |
