"Inelegant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this night of horror, Antwerp, to use an inelegant but descriptive expression, developed a violent case of the jim-jams. The next night and every night thereafter until the Germans came in and took the city, she thought she saw things; not green rats and pink snakes, but large, ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... or poultry do not touch the bones with your fingers. To take a bone in the fingers for the purpose of picking it, is looked upon as being very inelegant. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... folds of Memmi's drapery cast with unbroken grace and complete gradations of shade, while Taddeo's are rigid and meagre; also in the heads, generally Taddeo's type of face is square in feature, with massive and inelegant clusters or volutes of hair and beard; but Memmi's delicate and long in feature, with much divided and flowing hair, often arranged with exquisite precision, as in the finest Greek coins. Examine successively in this respect only the heads ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... more celebrated binders, and they need not despair of rivalling them. Above all, let them look well to the management of the backs of their books, and especially to the headbands. The latter are in general heavy and inelegant. Let them also avoid too much choking and beating, (I use technical words—- which you understand as well as any French or English bookbinder) and especially to be square, even, and delicate in the bands; and the "Saturnia regna" of book-binding ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp his former powers seem to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression or variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his love of lyrics that, having written with great vigour and poignancy his "Epistle to Curio," he transformed it afterwards into an ode ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... too slowly nor too hastily, nor as if gulping the wine, nor too frequently, nor without water—as drunkards do. Wipe your lips before and after drinking, and do not breathe too loudly then or at any other time, for that is very inelegant. ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... peculiarity the Chinese notice in a foreigner is his dress. It is a requisite with them that the clothes must be loose, and so draped as to conceal the contour of the body. The short sack-coat and tight trousers of the foreigner are looked upon as certainly inelegant, if not actually indecent. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... senatorial, popular, or judicial. These different styles of eloquence were represented by the grave and dignified debates of the Senate, the impassioned and often noisy and inelegant harangues of the Forum, and the learned pleadings or ingenious appeals of the courts. Among the orators of ancient Rome, Hortensius, (114-50 B.C.), an eloquent advocate, and Cicero ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and irritation were apparent in the inelegant jocosity of my manner. At any rate, Stephen Strong, who was a ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of the peace!" . . . Here Karl Karl'itch used an inelegant expression, which showed plainly that he was no unqualified admirer of the new judicial institutions. "What is the use of applying to the justices? The nearest one lives six miles off, and when I go to him he evidently tries to make me lose as much time as possible. I am sure to lose ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... from folks don't step so lively as they do up here, and old Colonel Tayloes, he used to say there ain't nothin' so inelegant as hurry, lessen 'tis worry. But of course I shouldn't have had no discussion in my mind about that bell. I got a ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... the melancholy fate of his young sovereign, pays the following not inelegant, and certainly not parsimonious tribute to his memory, in a letter written a few days after his death, which, it may be noticed, he makes a day earlier than other contemporary accounts. "Octavo Calendas ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... about the canoes before we go any further. Among the Society Islands, the art of building them, like all native accomplishments, has greatly deteriorated; and they are now the most inelegant, as well as the most insecure of any in the South Seas. In Cook's time, according to his account, there was at Tahiti a royal fleet of seventeen hundred and twenty large war canoes, handsomely carved, and otherwise adorned. At ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... however, been greatly overrated, on the supposition that several powerfully written documents, put forth under his name, but composed by some of his more highly-gifted friends, were his own productions. His style was, in fact, much beneath his station: it was inelegant, destitute of force, and even occasionally incorrect. He read his speeches well, but not excellently: he possessed no eloquence, although, as a convivial orator, he is said to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... that not only those pointed out, but all standing around, had expressions immeasurably more in keeping with a band of outcast spirits than suggestive of an assembly representing wisdom and dignified ease. At that moment, however, a most inelegant movement was caused by one suddenly declaring that he had recognised this one who is inscribing his experiences to be the apparition of a certain great reformer who during the period of his ordinary existence had received the name of Guy Fawkes, ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... preternaturally large eyes, more nearly resembling advertisements for a hair dye or complexion bleach than ecclesiastical subjects. Around the main altar stood armoured soldiers of Biblical antiquity, squat, inelegant figures that had first been painted on canvas and were afterward cut out like gigantic paper dolls, being put into wooden grooves to ensure ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... taking their morning dip. It was most absurd to see entire families, from the bald-headed and spectacled grandfather to the baby who could scarcely walk, all disporting themselves in the water together, many of them supported by the very inelegant-looking bladders I have mentioned. There was a little delay in mounting our horses, under the shade of the fig-trees; but when we were once off, a party of eleven, the cavalcade became quite formidable. As we clattered up the paved streets, between vineyard and garden walls, 'curiosity ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the arts, literature and society. And those who do this are for the most part unbearable. After swearing by Voltaire they have gone back to spirituality and mysticism, the last drawing-room craze. Now that a firm faith in science is regarded as brutish and inelegant, they fancy that they rid themselves of their caste by feigning amiable doubt, and ignorance, and innocence. What they most fear is that they may carry a scent of the schools about with them, so they put on extremely Parisian airs, venture on somersaults and slang, and assume all the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... words are in the language for a purpose. "And," "a," "the," are important, and their elimination often makes a letter bald, curt, and distinctly inelegant. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by —- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be and to ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... interview Sopater succeeded in convincing the Singhalese monarch of the greater power of Rome as compared with that of Persia, by exhibiting the large and highly finished gold coin of the Roman Emperor in contrast with the small and inelegant silver money of the Shah. This story would, however, appear to be traditional, as Pliny relates a somewhat similar anecdote of the ambassadors from Ceylon in the reign of Claudius, and of the profound respect excited in their minds by the sight of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and forward,—why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... himself of the irritating thoughts. He walked along the fat and fertile Kentish fields, by the neat iron railing with which they were enclosed. All about him was visible the care of man. Nothing was left wild. The trees were lopped into proper shape, cut down where their presence seemed inelegant, planted to complete the symmetry of a group. Nature herself was under the power of the formal influence, and flourished with a certain rigidity and decorum. After a while the impression became singularly ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... aversion to the married state. Sigonius, a learned and well-known scholar, would never marry, and alleged no inelegant reason; "Minerva and Venus could ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... enough to say that Balzac knew nothing of the art of painting young girls; they make use of the inelegant, unpolished word rate to qualify his portraits of this genre. To be sure, Balzac's triumph is, we admit, in his portraits of mothers or passionate women who know life. Certain authors, without counting George Sand, have given us sketches of young girls far superior to Balzac's, but that ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... too damee sure 'bout lat, Linee," was Sing's inelegant but convincing reply, as he turned ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hut, and told me to follow them. I readily complied. But here a new difficulty occurred. The Moors, accustomed to a loose and easy dress, could not reconcile themselves to the appearance of my NANKEEN BREECHES, which they said were not only inelegant, but, on account of their tightness, very indecent; and as this was a visit to ladies, Ali ordered my boy to bring out the loose cloak which I had always worn since my arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... no attempts should have been made to improve the fires which are made in the open Chimnies of elegant apartments, by preparing the fuel; for nothing surely was ever more dirty, inelegant, and disgusting ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... in this way are not only unenlivened by any excursions beyond the bounds of mere matter of fact, but, from the habit or necessity of taking a certain portion of time for correction, are singularly confused, disjointed, and inelegant in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also /v./ phrase, 'to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... rejoined good-humouredly, "we will both do that anon, an you think you can loosen these demmed ropes, and release me from my inelegant attitude." ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ill-made, ill- shaped, ill-proportioned; crooked &c (distorted) 243; hard featured, hard visaged; ill-favored, hard-favored, evil-favored; ill-looking; unprepossessing, unattractive, uninviting, unpleasing. graceless, inelegant; ungraceful, ungainly, uncouth, stiff; rugged, rough, gross, rude, awkward, clumsy, slouching, rickety; gawky; lumping, lumpish^; lumbering; hulky^, hulking; unwieldy. squalid, haggard; grim, grim faced, grim visaged; grisly, ghastly; ghost like, death like; cadaverous, grewsome^, gruesome. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not grow up elegant, to fit the name. The name grew inelegant to fit her. During her earliest years the witty little children called her Elephant until they tired of the ingenuity and allowed her to lapse indolently from ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Louise 500,000 francs for her toilet, but she never spent the entire amount. She had little taste in dress, and would have made a very inelegant appearance had she not been well advised. The Emperor was present at her toilet those days on which he wished her to appear especially well, and himself tried the effect of different ornaments on the head, neck, and arms of the Empress, always selecting something very handsome. The ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... style. The plots are more monotonous and sometimes unnecessarily coarse and rough; the lessons are more obscure and sometimes are of doubtful value; and the style is much less forcible, in fact is often labored and inelegant. Yet many of the stories are attractive and harmless. They may be used to make the transition from fairy tales to more elevated literature. Their very imperfections can be utilized to discourage the reading of fairy tales and by criticism and gentle ridicule ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... collection of French Memoirs now while I am alive. Well, I am in very truth your best well-wisher, but incline to bequeath my modern library to a public body of female ladies, if you pardon that odd and inelegant expression. I have nothing good or interesting to tell you of myself. My strength will stand no ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... corruption of am not. It is inelegant though grammatical to say I ain't but absolutely incorrect ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... despite its antiquity, came immediately from Holland; the claw and ball foot of ancient Oriental use; the straight, square, uncompromising early Georgian leg; the carved lattice-work Chinese leg; the pseudo-Chinese leg; the fretwork leg, which was supposed to be in the best Gothic taste; the inelegant rococo leg with the curled or hoofed foot; and even occasionally the spade foot, which is supposed to be characteristic of the somewhat later style of Hepplewhite. His chair-backs were very various. His efforts in Gothic were sometimes highly successful; often they took the form of the tracery ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... deeper causes of things human and divine; he who looks closely will see that even the barbarians had intelligence (mercurium), not on the tongue but in the breast.' Himself writing a vigorous and not inelegant Latin, and a master of clear exposition, he despised the purism of pedants and the current over-estimate of borrowed forms, especially when joined, as they often are, with one- sidedness, and involving indifference to the wider truth of the things themselves. Looking ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... his own strong understanding in a matter of which he has the full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant; and the awkwardness of his efforts is more perceptible from the hugeness of the body that is put in motion to produce them. He is like the animal whom Milton describes as making sport for our first ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... clothe his splendid body in that fashion which her culture demanded. His simple and primitive views of life—as natural as the instinct which governs all creatures in his God-cultivated world—were now unrefined, ignoble, inelegant. His fine nature and unembarrassed intelligence, which found in the wealth of realities amid which he lived abundant food for his intellectual life, and which enabled him to see clearly, observe closely and think with such clean-cut directness, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the door of an old-fashioned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down from it to the sill of the sunk doorway. An ostler ran out to take the horse, and helped the boy down tenderly and carefully. Sherbrooke himself then dismounted, looked at his beast from head to foot, and then ordering the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... plump, coarse looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her manners are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... jingling!—a whole string of Chinese pack ponies, eighty at least, coming up from Bhamo, each laden with bales, a Chinaman to every three ponies. At the end stalks a lean Indian. I suppose he owns the show—his wife follows, a very black thing, a Madrassee, to judge by her not very white and inelegant hangings. They drink and spit at the spring, and he sees us and salaams, and looks in to see the durwan, who is ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... pretend to say that we have invariably assigned to them their true origin, or that their real character and position have been ascertained. Still, we would hope, that, as relics of the past rescued from the oblivion to which they were inevitably hastening, they are not either an uninteresting or inelegant addition to the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... accessories, would have been regarded and inveighed against as a popish and superstitious innovation; and a charge of this kind was at a later period preferred against Archbishop Laud. Parochial churches were, therefore, now repaired when fallen into a state of dilapidation, in a plain and inelegant mode, in complete variance with the richness and display observable in the style ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Richard's stature,—a comment not likely to have been peculiarly acceptable in the Rous Roll, the portrait of Richard represents him as undersized, but compactly and strongly built, and without any sign of deformity, unless the inelegant defect of a short neck can be so called.] commended Richard's "princely countenance," the compliment was not one to be disputed, much less contemned. But now as he rose, obedient to a whisper from the duchess, and followed ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man to another on the floor of the House. Conkling, although unable to reply effectively, demeaned himself with great dignity. His manners were placid and his reply was in measured terms. It was in striking contrast to what Mr. Blaine said. To use a phrase graphic if inelegant, he jumped on Conkling with both feet and literally tore him to pieces without any attempt at dignity. This controversy with Conkling probably caused the defeat of Mr. Blaine for the nomination—first, in conventions prior to 1884, and finally after he ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in high collars or any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the base of her was a vanity gaunt and greedy! When she wasn't in a state of personal untidiness ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... instance, in "chucking" certain kinds of brass work. The surfaces to be soldered must be carefully tinned, most conveniently by the help of the blow-pipe and chloride of zinc. After tinning, the surfaces are laid together and heated so as to "sweat" them together; the phrase, though inelegant, is expressive. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... named Charles, after Toc's young brother, and the inelegant name of "Dumplin'" had been given him to prevent his being ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... in one hand a pair of scales, in one of which stands Booth, and in the other Edmund Kean. To the mind of the satirist there appears to be no difference in the abilities of the two performers, as the scales exactly balance. On the right, the portico of Covent Garden is overshadowed by the inelegant but massive proportions of Drury Lane; the intervening space being occupied by various figures and details, among which is a "patent clapping machine." An advertisement board carried by one of the figures clearly shows that the satire—an elaborate idea badly worked out—has reference ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the worthy curate, as may be inferred from the foregoing statement, is deficient in regularity of plan; the style is artless and often inelegant, but it abounds in facts not to be met with elsewhere, often given in a very graphical manner, and strongly characteristic of the times. As he was contemporary with the events and familiar with many of the persons of his history, and as he was a man of probity ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... delivered this inelegant exclamation with feeling. "Poll, you're the best little sport I ever knew. You always understand. Any other girl would have said that running was bad for my heart, and expected me ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... be any Protestants left among the irresponsible rich. Those who do not follow the main current will probably take up with weird science-denouncing sects of the faith-healing type, or with such pseudo-scientific gibberish as Theosophy. Mrs. Piper (in an inelegant attitude and with only the whites of her eyes showing) has restored the waning faith of Professor James in human immortality, and I do not see why that lady should stick at one dogma amidst the present quite insatiable demand for creeds. Shintoism and either a cleaned or, more probably, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... not argue the question, Blue Bonnet. Please eliminate the word from your vocabulary. It is inelegant as ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... almost barbaric simplicity. Metal seems to be scarce, and not many kinds are found. There is no silver, zinc, or platinum; but only gold, copper, tin, lead, and iron. Gold is found in beads, ear-rings, and other ornaments, which are in some instances of a fashion that is not inelegant. [PLATE XVI., Fig. 3.] Copper occurs pure, but is more often hardened by means of an alloy of tin, whereby it becomes bronze, and is rendered suitable for implements and weapons. Lead is rare, occurring only in a very few specimens, as in one jar or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... supplies were meant, others did not, and of these latter one jocular and untutored Patlander sang out, "Bully for the leftenint; 'tis he that knows how to look out for number wan." Whereat there came furious shouts of "Shame!" "Shut up!" and inelegant and opprobrious epithets, all at the expense of the impetuous son of Erin who had spoken too soon. Some one whacked his empty head with an equally empty canteen and called him a Yap. Some one else, farther back, sang out, "Three cheers for the lieutenant," and stentorian authority in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... certainly never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of Caligula. Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes. She held up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility. Poppaea, in short, gave herself up to ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... colours flying and bands playing: the old brave way was impossible in the face of machine guns. The pomp and pageantry of battle had departed and there was nothing left but for the attacking party to crawl in a most inelegant fashion ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... wilderness of creosote bushes and mesquite. I remember that for some offence against the powers of the day I was then "serving time" for a short while and, among other things, I cut shrub on the site of Tucson's Military Plaza, with an inelegant piece of iron chain dangling uncomfortably from my left leg. Oh, I wasn't a saint in those days any more than I am a particularly bright candidate for wings and a harp now! I gave my superior officers fully as much trouble ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... station platform and the subsequent warmth of the room, the hearty meal, all these combined to make for sleepiness so overpowering that several times the boy had caught his nose descending toward his plate in a most inelegant nod. But it hurt his pride to think his ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... or without unity. But the least appearance of violence or extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint, is, I think, destructive of all beauty whatsoever in everything, color, form, motion, language, or thought, giving rise to that which in color we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened; which qualities are in everything most painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. And herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... inelegant comment. "This is what comes of being a twin. I think I'd better hurry and gobble up the small trunk space that is left me; otherwise I may have to carry a large part of my wardrobe home in a bundle." Dread of such a contingency sent her fleeing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... more than once. People smiled, not unkindly, when they mentioned Mrs. Errol, a good sort, they said; but, like many another woman of inelegant exterior, how good a sort only her Maker knew. She was large in every way. It was the only word that described her; large-boned, large-featured, and so stout that she wheezed—a fact which in no way limited her activity. Her ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... laughing Aileen with her, for she was an impulsive little woman; but at whatever opening in the crowd she and her friend presented themselves, they were sure to find the diver's ridiculously broad and now inelegant back turned towards them. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... wonders. But the attention excited to these striking novelties gradually became enlightened; a more familiar acquaintance disclosed their genuine properties, and the purposes to which they might be applied at home;—Raleigh introduced the potatoe on his Irish estates;—an acceptable however inelegant luxury was discovered in the use of tobacco; and somewhat later, the introduction of tea gradually brought sobriety and refinement into the system of modern ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a too rapid drop in an elevator. So Henry had come to her at the first possible moment to protest against "this Tom Reynolds." "He has had a bad recitation," she thought, "and now he is going to take it out on me," and then she called her brother a hard and inelegant name, as people will when angry with their dearest relatives. Had Nancy been of a satirical nature she might have made something of her brother's adoption of Freudian methods; but she was not, and she ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... words he uttered now were not of classic heroism. They were simple, colloquial, inelegant. For Stern, his eyes blazing, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... by Batornicki, but translated by him from the Polish. In the preface he apologises for inelegant German, as that is not his native language; and I presume he is a Pole, as he says the author's name is known among us (unter uns). As he calls it a poem (Dichtung) the original is probably in verse. I think the Munich critic could have seen only some extracts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... issued twice! the 'Shepherd's Calendar' was entirely overlooked by the public and the press. And it could not well be otherwise. The book, instead of in morocco, was bound, or rather stitched, in coarse blue cardboard; the paper was not only not 'toned,' but rough and inelegant in the extreme; and the edges, which, ought to have been smooth and gilded, were rugged and uneven like a ploughed field. It was hopeless to expect that a most discerning public should pay six shillings for a book of pastorals of such clownish appearance, when the sweetest ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... shouted Harold. Afterwards it occurred to me that this inelegant appellation may have been meant for his father, but at the time I took it ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Russian language as music can be. In the phrase of Jacques Riviere, "it speaks in words ending in ia and schka, in humble phrases, in swift, poor, suppliant terms." Indeed, so unconventional, so crude, shaggy, utterly inelegant, are Moussorgsky's scores, that they offend in polite musical circles even to-day. It is only in the modified, "corrected" and indubitably castrated versions of Rimsky-Korsakoff that "Boris" and "Khovanchtchina" maintain themselves upon the stage. This iron, this granite and adamantine music, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... closely and markedly even than literature—to the all-important truth that men stand or fall according as they look up to the Ideal or not. For example, the Architecture of Egypt, her pyramids and temples, cumbrous and inelegant, but imposing from their vastness and their gloom, express the ideal of Sense or Matter—elevated and purified indeed, and nearly approaching the Intellectual, but Material still; we think of them as of natural ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... stiffest and best behaved of the first division, and might be ranked with Grosvenor Square or Lancaster Gate. There were rooms on the second floor where girls of the second and third division herded in inelegant obscurity, the Bloomsbury and Camden Town of the mansion. On this story, too, slept the rabble of girls under twelve—creatures utterly despicable in the minds of girls in their teens, and the rooms they inhabited ranked as low as ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... object which is unpleasantly familiar to most country folks—that salivary mass variously known by the libellous names of "snake-spit," "cow-spit," "cuckoo-spit," "toad-spit," and "sheep-spit," or the inelegant though expressive substitute of "gobs." The foam-bath pavilion of the "spume-bearer," with his glittering, bubbly domicile of suds, is certainly familiar to most of my readers; but comparatively few, I find, have cared ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... their heads, as women in England in a shower throw over their aprons, and from the use of always holding it down to one side of the face, all have a continued languishing manner of holding their heads one way—picturesque enough as expressive of a transient emotion, but shocking and inelegant in 'all' and always. The language Arabic, corrupted with Italian, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... out," was Jerry's relieved, inelegant comment to Susan Atwell, as she moved to the right. Susan stifled an irrepressible chuckle and sobered her face ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... small things with great, my taste in music is like the mighty Frederick of Prussia's taste in painting: we are told that he frequently admired what the connoisseurs decried, and always without any hypocrisy confessed his admiration. I am sensible that my taste in music must be inelegant and vulgar, because people of undisputed and cultivated taste can find no merit in my favourite tunes. Still, because I am cheaply pleased, is that any reason why I should deny myself that pleasure? Many of our strathspeys, ancient and modern, give me most exquisite enjoyment, where you and other ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had been built for their ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... stop teasing me I will do something at you," meaning "I will punish you." That form of expression is very common in some localities, and it is even more inelegant than common. The use of the preposition to instead of at would be a slight improvement, but the ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... the dead; sometimes, however, there was the addition of a square vestibule in front of the tomb, and here, on prescribed days, the memorial ceremonies took place. The statues of the double were rude and clumsy, the coffins heavy and massive, and the figures with which they were decorated inelegant and out of proportion, while the stelae are very rudely cut. From the time of the VIth dynasty the lords of the Said had been reduced to employing workmen from Memphis to adorn their monuments; but the rivalry between the Thebans and the Heracleopolitans, which set the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... frequently confused. The former suggests a type of behavior which is artless, spontaneous, and free from the restraints of custom. The latter implies fully as great lack of knowledge of social usage, and, in addition, conduct which is primitive and perchance inelegant. Thus, the.................. youth was the first to enter the car, and his.................. little sister warmly kissed him in the presence of the king. We may also say that a country boy is.................. with respect to city ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the professors of the two others. The chapel of the alienated college is yet standing, a fabrick not inelegant of external structure; but I was always, by some civil excuse, hindred from entering it. A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been made to convert it into a kind of green-house, by planting its area with shrubs. This new method of gardening is unsuccessful; the plants ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... is; one 'good for sore eyes,' as you sometimes say;" and with this inelegant remark Miss Alfaretta walked away while laughing, happy Jim sped downwards to the vine-wreathed lodge at the great entrance gate. He had been happy all that summer, never more so; yet happier than ever now as he stepped into the freshly furbished upper chamber ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... having a direct tendency to open and encourage a dangerous commerce with evil spirits, who were supposed to take upon themselves, at these unhallowed altars, the names and characters of these foul deities. Not only, therefore, the temple of Cybele, with its gigantic portico, its huge and inelegant statues, and its fantastic hieroglyphics, was thrown down and defaced when the empire was converted to the Christian faith, but the very ground on which it stood was considered as polluted and unhallowed; and no Emperor having yet occupied the site with a Christian church, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... keeper of the cafe, a stupid and silent beer-cask, always in his sleeved vest, and remarkable only for his carved pipe; the bailiff, a scoffer, dressed invariably in black, scorned for his inelegant habit of carrying off what remained of his sugar; the town-clerk, the gentleman of acrostics, a person of much amiability and a feeble constitution, who sent to the illustrated journals solutions of enigmas and rebuses; ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling or guardhouse of the Concierge ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... elegancies of style, to the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded and ill-delivered. Your business is negotiation abroad, and oratory in the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make, in either case, if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... cheerfully responds to the paternal admonition. He curbs his natural inclinations, which are neither inelegant nor unmanly; for, on the one side, he is very fond of music and painting, an accomplished amateur, and deemed a sound connoisseur in both; and, on the other side, he has a passion for all field sports, and especially for hunting. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I can pick up," declared John, dropping calmly into the inelegant expression, "he told 'em to go ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... ungraceful, bungling, maladroit, gawky, inelegant, ungainly, loutish, unskillful, unwieldy, uncourtly; embarrassing. Antonyms: graceful, dexterous, deft, courtly, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... instances of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... highly sensational in-door costumes would be to some of us. In order to establish herself in the estimation of the average Persian, as all that a woman ought to be, the European lady would have to conceal her face and cover her shapely, tight-fitting dress with an inelegant, loose mantle, whenever she ventured outside her own doors. With something of a penchant for undertaking things never before accomplished, I proposed one morning to take a walk around the ramparts that encompass the Persian ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... darned sight worse than strange!" he blurted out—then asked pardon for his inelegant vehemence; but she only smiled dreamily and sipped her currant ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... although so favoured by nature, still there would have been considered something wanting in him by those who had been accustomed to move in the first circles, to make him the refined gentleman. His movements and carriage were not inelegant, but there was a certain retinue wanting. He bowed well, but still it was not exactly the bow of a gentleman. The nursery-maids as they passed by said, "Dear me, what a handsome gentleman!" but had the remark been made by a higher ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... drama, and the common rock on which their poets made shipwreck.[27] Let us, however, rejoice for the sake of the critical reputation of Vauvenargues that he was unable to read Shakespeare. One for whom Moliere is too eccentric, grotesque, inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but most irregular ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... the most interesting book. Captain Widdrington should bear in mind, that however sterling his matter may be, some attention to manner is also expected, and that the appearance, at least, of the most valuable gems is deteriorated by an inelegant setting. Nevertheless, in this book-making age, it may be considered highly creditable to an author when faults of form and not of substance are the greatest with which he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... to choose, for delicacy best; What Order so contriv'd, as not to mix Tastes not well join'd, inelegant, but bring Taste after Taste, upheld ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... it be our knowledge of the tigers in India, as we sit here. Exactly what do we MEAN by saying that we here know the tigers? What is the precise fact that the cognition so confidently claimed is KNOWN-AS, to use Shadworth Hodgson's inelegant ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... Hastings in two inelegant syllables, on the second of which her uncontrollable voice rose. "My brother Otho, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... not long held in suspense; a volley of inelegant phrases saluted his ears, while the thong of a hunting-whip twisted playfully about his leg. Finding the play unequal, he wisely gave up the game—by dropping his bird on one side, and himself on the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... though at times we find a relief from the luxuriance of that divine rhythm in the cooler cadences of the Schottish. By universal consent and instinct, we banish the quadrille, stiff and artificial; the polka, inelegant and essentially vulgar; and the various hybrid measures with which the low ingenuity of professors has filled society. But we move like gods and goddesses to the sadly joyful strains of Strauss and Weber and Beethoven and Mozart, and the mighty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his bounties as in Heaven. So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order, so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change; Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields In India East or West, or middle shore In Pontus or the Punick coast, or where Alcinous reigned, fruit of ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... is common wherever those trees are to be found. The Anthochaera carunculata is the largest of the wattle birds in South Australia. It has a grey plumage, mottled with white, and is by no means inelegant in its shape, being a long, slender, well proportioned bird. The whole of the Honey-suckers have curved bills ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... little in use. The hair is commonly worn hanging down loose; but some, when they have no cap, tie it in a bunch on the crown of the head. Their dress, upon the whole, is convenient, and would, by no means be inelegant, were it kept clean. But as they rub their bodies constantly over with a red paint, of a clayey or coarse ochry substance, mixed with oil, their garments, by this means, contract a rancid offensive smell, and a greasy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... sentiments so little corresponded, nor could his avowed opinions awaken in her any exertion to render herself more acceptable to him. When he had taken sufficient time to study her character, he decided that the inelegant mirth, and ungoverned vanity of Amaranthe were preferable to the dawdling insipidity of Claribel. After this decision Lionel ceased to be ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... precarious foothold amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a homely, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of large burden are enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the town. The general style of building offers little to admire; the houses being for the most part flat-fronted, monotonous, and graceless, without any species of architectural decoration to relieve their inelegant uniformity. It is the position of the city, the air of lightness given to it by the water, which traverses it in every direction, and the life and movement of the port, that form its chief recommendations. In their architectural ideas the Swedes appear to be entirely utilitarian, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... struggle. Cornelia had applied the match, and the tow blazed. Elma laughed again, and seated herself beneath the tree. Cornelia had tossed her hat on the ground and clasped her hands round her knees in comfortable, inelegant position. Elma did the same, and the American girl, watching her, was at a loss to account for the reckless radiance of her smile. The sunshine flickered down between the branches on the sweet pink and white face, the pansy blue eyes, and long slender throat; it shone ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... penetrated with the same sentiment, for he rode up close to the cart and grasping the mud guard, turned on his saddle and wistfully shaking his bead, gave vent to his feelings by the following very inelegant but ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... convent in the outskirts of Paris, and her first communion was delayed till she should "make" it in that more pious atmosphere. The O'Keeffe convoyed her across the two Channels, and took the opportunity of visiting a "variety" theatre in Montmartre, where he was delighted to find John Bull and his inelegant womenkind so faithfully delineated. So exhilarated was he by this excellent take-off and a few bocks on the Boulevard, that he refused to get down from the omnibus at ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... with a view to publication. The entire manuscript shows little evidence of revision. In fact, the expression is so homely and natural that his grandson, William Temple Franklin, in editing the work changed some of the phrases because he thought them inelegant and vulgar. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... as they approach the age of puberty, seem possessed with the idea that the unfrequent action of the bowels is a desirable habit. They do not associate with the duty a proper regard for health, but consider it as an inelegant and repugnant practice. The consequence is, that at this susceptible period, constipation, induced by neglect, arouses a latent hepatic or pulmonary disease which has been ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... apparently occurred to disturb the amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of high-school athletics. Girls who had to walk more than half a mile to school were pitied. There was not a tennis-court in the town; physical exercise was thought rather inelegant for the daughters of well-to-do families. Some of the high-school girls were jolly and pretty, but they stayed indoors in winter because of the cold, and in summer because of the heat. When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes; their ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... that appeared to charge Jorian DeWitt with having misconducted himself. The moment Lika had gone upstairs for two or three hours' sleep, he said to me: 'Richie, you and I have no time for that. We must have a man at Falmouth's house by eight o'clock. If the scrubbing-maid on all fours-not an inelegant position, I have remarked—declares him dead, we are at Bartlett's (money-lender) by ten: and in Chippenden borough before two post meridian. As I am a tactician, there is mischief! but I will turn it to my uses, as I did our poor Jorian to-night; he smuggled in the Chassediane: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... French bedroom is a bitter mockery—a ghastly attempt to serve two masters which succeeds in being agreeable to neither. It is a thing of traps and delusions, constructed on the assumption that it is inelegant to be known to wash or to sleep, and yet pervaded with suggestions of uncleanness compared with which a well-wrung bathing sponge, well en evidence, is a delightful symbol of purity. This comes of course from that supreme French quality, the source of half the charm of the French ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but occasionally obstinate sex? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes) more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of "Punch" came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on this side of the Atlantic. This fact ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... interpretation of a place-name is correct which makes bad grammar of the original. The apparatus of Indian synthesis was cumbersome and perhaps inelegant, but it was nicely adjusted to its work. The grammatical relations of words were never lost sight of. The several components of a name had their established order, not dependent upon the will or skill of the composer. When we read modern advertisements of "cheap gentlemen's traveling ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... which is composed by large side chapels, whose roofs lie east and west, parallel to the body of the church. The tower, which is situated at the south-west angle of the west front, is strong, plain, and far from inelegant, being built with coarse lime stone, on which a new spire was erected since 1775, when a set of eight musical bells were fixed there, by Mr. Rudhall, of Glocester; the weight of the tenor being more than twenty-three hundred, and the key note ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... incarnate, that was, as people say, innate; and by virtue of those moulding forces he was doing his best to be an English gentleman. That mysterious impulse which compels the young male to make objectionable imputations against seemly lives and to write rare inelegant words upon clean and decent things burnt almost intolerably within him, and equally powerful now was the gross craving he had acquired for personal association with all that is prominent, all that is successful, all that is of good report. He had found his resultant in the censorious ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... far enough to disfigure him; his gayety was so much the more piquant because he always restrained it within the limits of perfect good taste, holding at a suspicious distance all that could wound the most fastidious delicacy. He never made use of an inelegant word, even in the moments of the most entire familiarity; an improper merriment, a coarse jest would have ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... such vulgar terms!" said Palmer reproachfully. "It's not only inelegant, but it's imprudent. Suppose ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... Koontie Mamadie's account, eleven thousand inhabitants. It has no public buildings, except the mosques, two of which, though built of mud, are by no means inelegant. The market place is a large square, and the different articles of merchandize are exposed for sale on stalls covered with mats, to shade them from the sun. The market is crowded with people from morning to night: some of the stalls contain nothing but beads; others indigo in ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... American professional seeker after the night romance of Paris, the French have a phrase which, be it soever inelegant, retains still a brilliant verity. The phrase is "une belle poire." And its Yankee equivalent ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... his overcoat, and there, beneath it, Gray beheld what he had more than half suspected, what indeed was ample cause for the quarrelsome stranger's apprehension. Held close to the owner's body was what in the inelegant jargon of the West is known as a "dog leg." The weapon, a frontier Colt's of heavy caliber, was full cocked under the old man's thumb; the hand holding it was as steady as ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... "Your language is inelegant, friend Blenham," he said slowly. "Like yourself it is better withdrawn from public notice. As to your meaning—why, by thunder, I half believe you are right! And ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... shortly shown in. She had been pretty, and was so still, but anxiety was pictured in her pale countenance. Her dress was plain, but not inelegant; and altogether she had a ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the commonalty much; but people of taste (among whom was Demetrius the Phalerean) thought there was something in it low, inelegant, and unmanly. Hermippus acquaints us, Aesion being asked his opinion of the ancient orators and those of that time, said, "Whoever has heard the orators of former times must admire the decorum ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... very small herrings, which it is the French fashion to take between the fingers daintily, and, holding by head and tail, nibble as children bite an apple. Whether indeed these little fish are caught by the angler, I know not; but this is certainly the way they are eaten—if inelegant, honi soit qui mal ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... her investigations in the kitchen in a little while to Frances, who waited alone before the happy little fire in the chimney. She sighed as she resumed her rocking-chair by the window, and crossed her seldom idle hands over her comfortably inelegant front. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... head may be mentioned the double use of words, such as "left" in the same form and sound, but different in meaning. Even where there is no obscurity, the juxtaposition of the same word twice used in two senses is inelegant, e.g. (Bain), "He turned to the left and left ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... instead of attending, as she ought to have done, to his description of Amtsvorstehers, was thinking of other things. Dellwig had thick lips that could not be hidden entirely by his grizzled moustache and beard, and he had the sort of eyes known to the inelegant but truthful as fishy, and a big obstinate nose, and a narrow obstinate forehead, and a long body and short legs; and though all this, Anna told herself, was not in the least his fault and should not in any way prejudice her against him, she felt that she was justified in wishing that his manners ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To a casual sister's ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Conciergerie. Anciently the site of palaces inhabited by the Kings down to Francis I., afterwards the meeting place of the Parliaments of Paris, it has been repaired and rebuilt since 1831 at a cost of nearly 1,000,000l. The courts of law open from the vast but inelegant Salle des Pas Perdus, which answers to our Westminster-hall. One of these courts was the Chamber of the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and communicated by a small door with the Conciergerie Prison. In the precincts of the Palais stands, or stood, the Sainte Chapelle, an exquisite specimen ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1] is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say "he—or she, or it—makes me sick," and this is the stock phrase of disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation. Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... general, that the chief objections against them are, that they are supposed to have passed through the earl of Morton's hands, the least scrupulous of all Mary's enemies; and that they are, to the last degree, indecent, and even somewhat inelegant, such as it is not likely she would write. But to these presumptions we may oppose the following considerations: 1. Though it be not difficult to counterfeit a subscription, it is very difficult, and almost ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... occasion to note suche myslyuinge. And so in playne wordes they repreued without fauour the vyces of the sayd yl disposyd peple of what condicion or order they were: Of this auncient wrytinge of Comedyes our laten Poetes deuysed a maner of wrytinge nat inelegant. And fyrst Lucilius composed one Satyre in the whiche he wrote by name the vices of certayne princes and Citezyns of Rome And that with many bourdes so y^t with his mery speche myxt with rebukes he correct al them of the cyte that disordredly lyued. But this mery ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... he resembled Ben Jonson in extreme corpulence, and proposed him for the model of dramatic writing, seems to have affected the coarse and inelegant debauchery of his prototype. He lived chiefly in taverns, was a gross sensualist in his habits, and brutal in his conversation. His fine gentlemen all partake of their parent's grossness and vulgarity; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Committee is quite right in remarking that the language of this important rubric, as set forth by the Convention of 1883, is "inelegant and inaccurate," but another diocese has called attention to the fact that the substitute which Maryland offers would, if adopted, enable any rector who might be so minded to withhold entirely from the non-communicating ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... evidence as to date of birth; his Violins small; founded the School of Cremona; probably a pupil of Gasparo da Salo; his model high, and sound-hole inelegant; his varnish deep golden; his "Charles IX. Set" of twenty-four Violins, six Tenors and eight Basses—Amati, Niccolo—AMATI, the Brothers ANTONIO and GIROLAMO; probable date of birth; comparison of the respective ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... bombastic straining for effect, are destructive of beauty, whether in color, form, motion, language, or thought;—in color, they would be called glaring; in form, inelegant; in motion, ungraceful; in language, coarse; in thought, undisciplined; in all, unchastened: these qualities are always painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. In color, for example, it is not red, but rose color, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... read in this illustration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... member of the professor's class had used the figures of speech too frequently employed by Rosamond, he would have received a dignified rebuke for "hyperbolical and inelegant language;" but it never occurred to the deluded man that anything but pearls of thought and diamonds of speech could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... correspondent lodging in unclean rooms. He looked hungry; he looked embittered; he looked like one of the under dogs, whose time had not come yet, would, indeed, never come. He looked, however, a gentleman, which, in the usual sense of the word, he was not. He was of middle height, slim and not inelegant of build; his trousers, though shiny, were creased in the right place; his coat fitted him though it lacked two buttons, and he dangled a monocle, which he screwed impartially now into one brown eye, now into the other. If any one would know, as they very properly might, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... a toothpick out of a match, decided that toothpicks were inelegant in his tragic mood, and longed: "Never did see her among her own kind of folks till now. I wish I could jabber about music and stuff. I'll learn it. I will! I can! I picked up autos in three months. I—— Milt, you're a dub. I wonder ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... myself with Levi's book, in answer to Dr. Priestley. It is a curious and tough work. His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me, particularly that of his two resurrections: the first, a particular one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
