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Jovial   Listen
adjective
jovial  adj.  
1.
(capitalized) Of or pertaining to the god, or the planet, Jupiter. (Obs.) "Our jovial star reigned at his birth." "The fixed stars astrologically differenced by the planets, and esteemed Martial or Jovial according to the colors whereby they answer these planets."
2.
Sunny; serene. (Obs.) "The heavens always joviall."
3.
Gay; merry; joyous; jolly; mirth-inspiring; hilarious; characterized by mirth or jollity; as, a jovial youth; a jovial company; a jovial poem. "Be bright and jovial among your guests." "His odes are some of them panegyrical, others moral; the rest are jovial or bacchanalian." Note: This word is a relic of the belief in planetary influence. Other examples are saturnine, mercurial, martial, lunatic, etc.
Synonyms: Merry; joyous; gay; festive; mirthful; gleeful; jolly; hilarious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Jovial" Quotes from Famous Books



... is all pragmatical fooling. The fooling Jack looked for was jovial fooling, fooling to the top of his bent, excellent fooling, which, under the semblance of folly, was both merry and wise. He did not look for mere unmixed folly, of which there never was a deficiency. The fool he looked for ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... as though you knew not how to enjoy yourselves. The duke, methinks, is like a brazen tower without gates, the garrison of which must be furnished with wings. Not long ago I heard him say at the table of a gay, jovial fellow that he was like a bad spirit-shop, with a brandy sign displayed; to ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... crazy man—tore him all to pieces and actually made him ill. But he was so soft-hearted that anyone could impose upon him. If he, as he said, 'forgot himself' and swore before grandmother, he went about depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial about the cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work overtime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to spare themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... compitum, and known as Compitalia or Laralia; it took place soon after the winter solstice, on a day fixed by the paterfamilias, in concert, no doubt, with the other heads of families in the pagus. Like most rejoicings at this time of year, it was free and jovial in character, and the whole familia took part in it, both bond and free. Each familia sacrificed on its own altar, which was placed fifteen feet in front of the compitum, so that the worshippers might be on their own ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... was the Gussie who stood before me now. Self-confidence seemed to ooze from the fellow's every pore. His face was flushed, there was a jovial light in his eyes, the lips were parted in a swashbuckling smile. And when with a genial hand he sloshed me on the back before I could sidestep, it was as if I had ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... What the girl was going to say was stopped by a jovial voice in the next door, calling out: "Uncle, here! How are you?" And a moment more the pleasant old gentleman was caught by both hands and drawn along to the next house. His nephew Charley saying: "I'm so delighted to see ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden

... every gallery at Rome till you almost yawn in their faces, are here of course. Besides these, by way of novelty, we fall in with the grave, much-bearded, long-faced bust, Epicurus underwritten on the pedestal. If it be that sage, then has not his face any vestige of the jovial "live while you live" expression which we might have expected, were he true to his own philosophy; but, on the contrary, a dignified Melancthon sadness, as if, like Solomon, he had had enough of pleasure, and had found nothing but "vanity and vexation of spirit" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... spent an hour in the great yard of the postoffice, waiting for my conductor to turn up and seeing the yellow malles-postes pushed to and fro. At last, being told my man was at my service, I was brought to speech of a huge, jovial, bearded, delightful Italian, clad in the blue coat and waistcoat, with close, round silver buttons, which are a heritage of the old postilions. No, it was not he; it was a friend of his; and finally ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... things careless; I do—too careless to please the women! Klk! I'll sing the 'Jovial Crew,' or any other song, when a weak old man would cry his eyes out. Jown it; I ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... jovial Gascon," replied Dick. "Come, Sir Giles! are we to have the young gentleman from you by force ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... she answered in the same dully-irritated way. "What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there immovably, till Mrs. Council came down to see her, piloted by two or three of the children. Mrs. Council, a jolly, large-framed woman, smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made the mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... another, and these were populated by pleasure-loving and sociable families of distinction. It was therefore a difficult matter for the well-born man or woman who took up a residence in the neighborhood to avoid the jovial sociability which reigned ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... Josh!" he shouted, feeling quite jovial and free towards him; and Uncle Josh started up and let his spade ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan

... spire, the sober schoolhouse, the smithy of the ringing anvil, the corner grocery, the cluster of friendly houses; the venerable parson, the wise physician, the canny squire, the grasping landlord softened or outwitted in the end; the village belle, gossip, atheist, idiot; jovial fathers, gentle mothers, merry children; cool parlors, shining kitchens, spacious barns, lavish gardens, fragrant summer dawns, and comfortable winter evenings. These were elements not to be discarded lightly, even by those who perceived that ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... no piece of crooked work they are not familiar with. He was nearly crazy when they caught him at it—thought he could be put in jail—he forgot, the poor boob ... who he was working for.... I'll never forget how fine the old Chief allayed his fears—'All for a good cause, my boy,' he said, in that jovial way of his, 'I have no fear—the Lord will look after His own.' No wonder he can get people to work for him. It is that hearty good nature of his, and he never preaches to any one, or scolds. He was just as kindly to the poor fellow as if he had ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... come to buy for the evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother, we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame Andre, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I can do him more good than ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was Alan skulking in the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... instruction under Nicolas Knupler; and afterwards it is said worked with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married. An extraordinary genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in Jan Steen with jovial habits of no moderate kind. The position of tavern-keeper in which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of eating and drinking, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... del Sarto and Fra Lippo Lippi can scarcely be conceived. The story of Filippo Lippi[29] is taken, like that of Andrea, from Vasari's Lives: it is taken as literally, it is made as authentically living, and, in its own more difficult way, it is no less genuine a poem. The jolly, jovial tone of the poem, its hearty humour and high spirits, and the breathless rush and hurry of the verse, render the scapegrace painter to the life. Not less in keeping is the situation in which the unsaintly friar is introduced: caught by the civic guard, past ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... boy who roamed over the hillsides with a piece of charcoal, searching for flat rocks upon which to draw his pictures; and who sang deep, full-throated ballads as he rode from one to the other of his scattered hill folk, upon his outlandish pinto. Surely, such men as he, and the jovial, whole-hearted Thompson—men who had known Vil Holland ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... in Urga with only one Cossack and on his way back had killed a Chinese officer and two soldiers with his bamboo stick or tashur; how he had no outfit save one change of linen and one extra pair of boots; how he was always calm and jovial in battle and severe and morose in the rare days of peace; and how he was everywhere his soldiers ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... amidst a silence that proved to be a wet blanket to all my attempts to be jovial, and light-hearted and devil-may-care. The Swede slumped in one seat, with our dunnage piled by his side, wheezing profanely as the lurching of the hack over the cobblestones jolted the sea-bags against him, and grunting at my efforts to make conversation. Newman ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... proprietor—almost as completely as his serfs; and sometimes that power was exercised in a most humiliating and shameful way. I have heard, for instance, of one priest who was ducked in a pond on a cold winter day for the amusement of the proprietor and his guests—choice spirits, of rough, jovial temperament; and of another who, having neglected to take off his hat as he passed the proprietor's house, was put into a barrel and rolled down a hill into the river at ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... weather rose to the occasion and calmed during the few hours of the twilight-day. It was a jovial occasion, and we celebrated it with the uproarious delight of a community of eighteen young men unfettered by small conventions. The sun was returning, and we were glad of it. Already we were dreaming of spring and sledging, summer and sledging, the ship and home. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... ravishingly exquisite, and offers a strange contrast to the "Requiescat," which is a dirge of the utmost largeness and grandeur. His graceful "Fly, White Butterflies," and "In Harbor," and the dramatic setting of "The Loreley," the jovial "Gather Ye Rosebuds" of jaunty Rob Herrick, the foppish tragedy of "La Vie est Vaine" (in which the composer's French prosody is a whit askew), that gallant, sweet song, "My True Love Hath My Heart," and a gracious setting of Heine's flower-song, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... tailor, is a fact which I think very few will venture to dispute. I may safely appeal to my readers, whether they ever knew one of that faculty that was not of a temperament, to say the least, far removed from mercurial or jovial. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... scuffling, intermingled with snatches of jovial remonstrance, made itself heard from the bottom of the ladder. A voice called up through the hatch, "Here's your uncle, Squahre Jack," ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... Reverence—for whom Phaddhy, with all his shrewdness in general, was not a match—went into his room, that he might send home about four dozen of honest, good-humored, thoughtless, jovial, swearing, drinking, fighting Hibernians, free from every possible ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... next moment he appeared at the top of the bank down which the "wolf" had wallowed. He hailed Uncle Dick and Betty with a great, jovial shout and plunged down the slope himself. He was a young man on snowshoes, and he proved to be a telegraph operator at ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... count that the planet under which a man is born will affect his temperament, make him for life of a disposition grave or gay, lively or severe. Yet our language affirms as much; for we speak of men as 'jovial' or 'saturnine,' or 'mercurial'—'jovial,' as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star, and of happiest augury of all: [Footnote: 'Jovial' in Shakespeare's time (see Cymbeline, act 5, sc. 4) had not forgotten its connexion ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions, and footstools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one! The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber. What good dinners you have—game ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Neapolitans accept as winter, came on apace. For some time past the air had been full of that mild chill and vaporous murkiness, which, not cold enough to be bracing, sensibly lowered the system and depressed the spirits. The careless and jovial temperament of the people, however, was never much affected by the change of seasons—they drank more hot coffee than usual, and kept their feet warm by dancing from midnight up to the small hours of the morning. The cholera was a thing ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... remark is not apparent to Delafield until some time later. He smiles at the professor's earnestness, which Muriel quite evidently shares, and is about to speak to the girl again when her brother, Jack, enters. He is about twenty-two, clean-cut and jovial, and he greets Delafield heartily, at the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, jovial, scoffing, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... usually jovial face of CHARLES HANSON TOWNE (that face which has launched a thousand quips) now all stern in his unbattled struggle with Prohibition, dourly surveying this "land of the spree and home of the grave."... "My children," says Towne, "as they ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... a touch of blue that, methought, did not come of the frosty air. He sat very high in saddle, upon a large-jointed bay, and wore a stained coat that covered his regimentals and reached almost to his rowels. A dirty red feather wagged over his hat-brim. As I rode up he greeted me with a jovial brotherly curse, and hoped—showing me his letter—that we kept good drink at the Castle. 'And if so,' he added, 'your little William the Conqueror may keep me so long as he ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... or two from neighbours near Whose company was jovial as could be; So their Mamma first started the idea That they should ask three gentlemen to tea Out in the hayfield, where they would be free, To help in tossing o'er the scented hay; Then all assemble underneath the tree, And chatter anything they'd ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... has gotten by the vitals; the other well lined with New-year's fare, conscious of the touch of cold on his periphery, but stepping through it by the glow of his internal fires. Such an one I remember, triply cased in grease, whom no extremity of temperature could vanquish. "Well," would be his jovial salutation, "here's a sneezer!" And the look of these warm fellows is tonic, and upholds their drooping fellow-townsmen. There is yet another class who do not depend on corporal advantages, but support the winter in virtue of a brave and merry heart. One shivering evening, cold enough for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... early friend and companion of Jefferson. He was a jovial young fellow noted for mimicry, practical jokes, fiddling and dancing. Jefferson's holidays were sometimes spent with Henry, and the two together would go off on hunting excursions of which each was passionately fond. Both were ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... in the Downs the fleet was moor'd, The streamers waving in the wind, When black-eyed Susan came aboard; "O! where shall I my true-love find? Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true If my sweet William sails among ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Lady Simpson, despite Pericault's cousins, and the only ones in the party who appeared to be uneasy were the cousins themselves. It is safe to say that it was not the rain that put a dampener on what otherwise might have been an excessively jovial party. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... was pale, curly-haired, intense, serious, mathematical, studious, altruistic, socialistic, and the natural foe of oligarchies. Kenwitz had foregone college, and was learning watch-making in his father's jewelry store. Dan was smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and tolerant alike of kings and ragpickers. The two foregathered joyously, being opposites. And then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his mainsprings—and to his private library in the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... doctoring, and Speke had many opportunities of seeing her, so completely winning her regard that she insisted on presenting him with various presents, among others a couple of wives, greatly to his annoyance. She appeared to be a jovial and intelligent personage. On another occasion Speke, when introduced, found her surrounded by her ministers, when a large wooden trough was brought in and filled with pomba. The queen put her head in and drank like a pig ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows—by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... into them, doubt not (oh, reader of ours!) that something exists answering to Greece and Rome. Odd it would be—curioes! as the Germans say—if in Jupiter—or Venus—those precedents should exist under the same names of Greece and Rome. Yet, why not? Jovial—and Venereal—people may be better in some things than our people (which, however, we doubt), but certainly a better language than the Greek man cannot have invented in either planet. Falling back from cases so low and so lofty (Venus an inferior, Jupiter a far superior planet) to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... wrote only one piece I do not remember. I had the pleasure about that time of initiating him as a member of the Knights of the Square Table,—always my favorite college club, for the reason, perhaps, that I was a sometime Grand Master. He was always a genial and jovial companion at our supper- parties at Fresh Pond ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the justice to say that he spoke most favourably of Mr. and Miss Costigan's moral character. "You see," said he, "I think the General is fond of the jovial bowl, and if I wanted to be very certain of my money, it isn't in his pocket I'd invest it—but he has always kept a watchful eye on his daughter, and neither he nor she will stand anything but what's honourable. Pen's attentions to her are talked about in the whole Company, and I ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... water for 9d.; then called upon a Mr. Butcher from Sheffield at Mr. Bliss's; took two glassfuls of Madeira, almost tipsy. Bought a razor strop for two dollars; then to J. D. after tea; went to a Mr. Alexander Taylor where Frank was stopping, found him a jovial pleasant man, also Mrs. T. formerly Burton, and sister-in-law to Joseph Wood's wife, and cousin to William R. Crook, like J. D., converted by his wife; ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... there was a tangled garden, full of neglected roses and camellias, and we filled the great fireplace with magnolias by day and with logs by night; I slept on a sort of shelf in the corner, bequeathed to me by Major F., my jovial predecessor,—and if I waked up at any time, I could put my head through the broken window, arouse my orderly, and ride off to see if I could catch a picquet asleep. I spell the word with a q, because such was the highest authority, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... truly," said the hermit, "and many a hundred pagans did he baptize there; but I never heard that he drank any of it. Every thing should be put to its proper use in this world. St. Dunstan knew, as well as any one, the prerogatives of a jovial friar." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... unusual visitors, the whole adventure ending in the happiest laughter over the expulsion of the dramatist. I may not have any right to say so, but I throw myself on the mercy of my hearers: I remember nothing in any chronicle so mercurial or jovial in its high spirits as this story of the first encounter and the beginning of friendship between Charles Nodier ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker

... regiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me that I would be ordered to escort that most loyal and noble lady back to the French frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I was inclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and jovial person and he laughed with me quite readily—but I got the order before dark all right. It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right flank of our whole front and there was some considerable disorder there. I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another. We ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... He hadn't dreamed there were men like that in this big, shiny-shod, stiffly laundered, white-collared city. Here were rufous men in overalls—worn, shabby, easy-looking overalls and old blue shirts, and mashed hats worn at a careless angle. Men, jovial, good-natured, with clear eyes, and having about them some of the revivifying freshness and wholesomeness of the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... jovial host, Harry Bailey, who finds the company so attractive that he must join it on its pilgrimage. He proposes that, as they shall be long on the way, they shall furnish their own entertainment by telling stories, the best tale to be rewarded by ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the tasteful courts to their work, their school, their meetings, or their meals; a still, soft walk on tiptoe, and an indistinct closing of doors in the house; a gentle, yet a more brisk movement in the shops; a free and jovial conversation when by themselves in the fields; but not a word, unless when spoken to, when other brethren than their care-takers were present—such were the orders we saw rigorously enforced, and the lenities we freely granted. We ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... in full swing on the thoroughfares; Democritus, the rollicker, had commanded his subjects to drive dull care away and they obeyed the jovial lord of laughter. Animal spirits ran high; mischief beguiled the time; mummery romped and rioted. Marshaled by disorder, armed with drollery and divers-hued banners, they marched to the Castle of Chaos, where the wise are fools, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... neither mysterious nor suggestive. She is hardly pretty, and stands in the obsequious attitude of an advocate. Solomon looks like a jovial good fellow. The two effigies on the other side of the door might perhaps invite attention if they were not so completely crushed by the third. Again a question. By what right does the author of that admirable book 'Ecclesiastes' find a place ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... it came—and we may say roughly that it set in a little before the beginning of this century—the reaction was to openness, but not to the same openness as had reigned in the earlier ages. It was to a scientific openness, not to the jovial frankness of the past, that we returned. The whole question of Amour became a terribly serious one. Earnest young men wrote in the public prints that from this time forth it would be impossible ever again to make ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... this huge, eleven-span structure had to be on the ground within ninety days from the date of the signing of the contract, and erected within eight months thereafter. The Commission's clerk, a big, red-faced, jovial fellow, informed Hanford that price was not nearly so essential as time of delivery; that although the contract glittered with alluring bonuses and was heavily weighted with forfeits, neither bonuses nor forfeitures could in the slightest manner compensate for a delay in time. It was due ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... of the Tollers opened into this suite, but it was invariably locked. One day, however, as I ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle coming out through this door, his keys in his hand, and a look on his face which made him a very different person to the round, jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His cheeks were red, his brow was all crinkled with anger, and the veins stood out at his temples with passion. He locked the door and hurried past me without a word ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... Sleep; you discover (with a pang) that you are forgotten, and a French Scientist or an Italian Futurist, or a Russian Nihilist has taken your place. But that, after all, may be the extent of your merits. You have had your show. New York has given your hand a jovial, welcome squeeze. The most hospitable hosts cannot forever regard you as a new arrival. You pass on, and others take the floor in the spot-light and register surprise, pleasure, indignation, criticism or whatever their ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... of those Jews who, then as now, infested Petersburg and terrorized men of standing from the very imperial family down. Anton had bought Zaremba's wretched debt, and the half-dozen innocent love-letters from a young girl who afterwards became an active Nihilist. And yet Anton Rubinstein, genius, jovial winer and diner, victim of the devils of envy and jealousy, had actually stooped, more than once, to threaten blackmail to the man whom he knew, in his heart, to have been guilty of nothing more than a week's unfortunate gambling, and an early attachment ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... letters and documents left there for his consideration. After all, life was a game. Even the early red men had their sport. Modern routine work without diversion was a treadmill, prisonlike existence. Delbridge was the happy medium. The jovial speculator had never heard of such a fine-spun thing as a conscience. What if Irene and Buckton were having their fun; could he not also enjoy himself? If the worst came, surely a man of the world, a stoical thoroughbred, who was willing to give and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... a jovial night of it. Cap'n Jack would not let me off his knee. Not he! He held me close and kindly; and while he yarned of the passage to my uncle, and interjected strange wishes for a wife, he whispered many things ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... as described by Charles Sumner when he called him a "jester," while Mr. Edmunds, by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a "sug-gester." Retaining the dragoon swagger, which he had acquired at West Point, a jovial nature, indifferent to the decorum of public life, he seemed to have been tossed into the Senate, where other people had with difficulty found their way by hard climbing ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... have never before troubled you with a request. The saints whose ears I chiefly worry with my pleas are the most exquisite and maternal Brigid, Gallant Saint Stephen, who puts fire in my blood, And your brother bishop, my patron, The generous and jovial Saint Nicholas of Bari. But, of your courtesy, Monsignore, Do me this favour: When you this morning make your way To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses because of her who sits upon it, When you come to pay your devoir to Our Lady, I beg you, say to ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... most happy to make your acquaintance, Miss," said the lady, in a jovial voice, and Aurelia made her curtsey, but at that moment the man announced that dinner was served, whereupon Mrs. Delia handed Mrs. Hunter in, and Mrs. Phoebe took ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... rumbling in his mossy throat. Some of his stout, devil-may-care spirit had gone into the native crew, and there was less of furtiveness and more of confident satisfaction with their job as the little brown men listened to the jovial harmony of their ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... laughed with him, for the usual British — or American — public likes to be amused, and thought it very amusing to see these beribboned and bestarred foreigners caught and tossed and gored on the horns of this jovial, slashing, devil-may-care ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... into the ghastly paleness of spectres. Again, he could catch glimpses of greater happiness; and if, on the one hand, the symptoms of poverty and distress were visible, on the other there was the jovial comfort of the wealthy farmer's house, with the loud laughter of its contented inmates. Nor must we omit the songs which streamed across the fields, in the calm stillness of the hour, intimating that they who sang ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... when I beheld him in the flesh, turned out a quite young man, very good-looking, with a fine black, short beard, a fresh complexion, and soft, merry black eyes. He was as jovial and good natured as any boy could desire. I was still asleep in my room in a modest hotel near the quays of the old port, after the fatigues of the journey via Vienna, Zurich, Lyons, when he burst in, flinging ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... baptized and had taken his first communion, he had vowed to give his life more fully to his Master's service. So here was his field of labor, and here he began his work. He was so utterly sincere and lovable, so bright and jovial, so firm of purpose and yet so kindly, that he was soon beloved by all the Christians and respected by the heathen. And one of his greatest helpers was widow Thah-so, who had been instrumental in bringing the missionary with his glad tidings to ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... with rifles, at Washington. The people described "mine host" as one of "fighting stock "; and spoke of him as being as thoughtful of the comfort, health and welfare of his slaves as of his own children. To me he seemed simply a genial, jovial, friendly and traditional "Boniface," chiefly intent on furnishing comfortable fare and an enjoyable place for ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... guest? or what servant would be retained by such a master? The most illiterate mechanic would in all respects be a more acceptable man, who would be frolicsome with his wife, free with his friends, jovial at a feast, pliable in converse, and obliging to all company. But I am tired out with this part of my subject, and so must pass to ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... report on the election in the Deux-Sevres; and M. Sarigue, humble and supplicating, conscious of his incapacity and filled by a horrible dread of being sent back to his home in disgrace, used to follow about this great jovial fellow with the curly hair and big shoulder blades that moved like the bellows of a forge beneath a light and tightly fitting frock-coat, without any suspicion that a poor anxious being like himself lay concealed within that ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... before his eyes he wore a large pair of spectacles, from which he evidently received but little benefit, as he required the assistance of the guide at every step. The two advanced a little way into the wustuddur and there stopped. Pascual Fava no sooner beheld them, than assuming a jovial air he started nimbly up, and leaning on his stick, for he had a bent leg, limped to a cupboard, out of which he took a bottle and poured out a glass of wine, singing in the broken kind of Spanish used by ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... popularity lies not in his treatment, which is neither critical nor scientific, but rather in a clever, easy, diffuse, jovial, amusing way of saying clearly what at the moment comes to him to say. His books have a certain raciness and spirit that recall the English squire of tradition. They rarely smell of the lamp. Now and then appears a strain of sturdy scholarship, leading the reader to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the gross fingers were playing. Beneath, the vast stomach swelled out into the slashed trunks, and the scarlet legs were crossed one over the other. On the head lay a broad plumed velvet cap, and beneath it was the wide square face, at once jovial and solemn, with the narrow slits of eyes above, and the little pursed mouth fringed by reddish hair below, that Chris remembered in the barge years before. The smell of musk lay heavy ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... welcome with full goblets of wine, with jovial company, fine company, and a pretty room and a good bed were provided for him; and yet his reception was not what he had dreamt and fancied it would be. He could not understand himself—he could not understand the others: but ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... the bluff captain and the jovial planter row ashore from their sea-tossed berths. Many were the friendly greetings extended them, both prime favorites among the settlers, who came hurrying down to Enfield when the news of the "Carolina's" arrival spread ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

... think you'd tumbled over a precipice!" exclaimed Sir Samuel, with the jovial loudness that comes to men of his age from good champagne or the rich red wines of ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... With this advice and gossip, with whispered consolation and laughing cheer—"'Tis no great matter after all; in the country—will be found girls a'plenty, quite as lucky or otherwise"—the kind and jovial dame ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... Virginia. They made the Quaker a present of ten chests of sugar, ten rolls of Brazil tobacco, thirty moidores, and some gold dust, in all to the value of about L250. They also made presents to the sailors, some more, some less, and lived a jovial life all the while they were upon their voyage, Captain Knot giving them their way; nor, indeed, could he help himself, unless he had taken an opportunity to surprise them when they were either drunk or asleep, for awake they wore arms aboard ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... dreamed that he was in a pleasant place jovial and rioting, when an earthquake rent the earth, out of which came bloody flames, and the figures of men tossed up in globes of fire, and falling down again with horrible cries and shrieks and execrations, while devils mingled among them, and ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... trees large enough for canoes. Here they put up a shed for immediate shelter, and at once proceeded to erect a cabin. New Year's Day dawned when but one wall of their cabin was completed; the genial and jovial day, however, was not permitted to pass uncelebrated, even by this weather-beaten crew of wanderers. All work was suspended, except that of roasting and boiling. The choicest of the buffalo meat, with tongues, humps, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with many jovial oaths, 'to think I'm back again! There, she's swounded. What folks be women, to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... round the same season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found the two elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree, the pagan losing most of its serious meaning, and continuing mainly as ritual performed for the sake of use and wont or as a jovial tradition, the Christian becoming humanized, the skeleton of dogma clothed with ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... rang out, and at the sound of it Steve's heart grew chill. For there was in the timbre of it a brutal, jovial triumph. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... grandeur of its scenery. The occasional songs and poems in celebration of great personalities, —whether they were of high station and renown, or lowly and unfamed, —or for festivals, earnest or jovial, are nearly all conceived in the spirit of patriotism,—love of Norway, its historic past, its present, its future. They may be social songs memorial or political poems, ballads or lyrical romances,—all are inspired by and inspire ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... who had remained behind to give an order sending a carriage to the nearest railway station. The judge, too, was serious and deeply shocked, for he also had greatly admired and revered the old pastor. The stately rectory had been the scene of many a jovial gathering when the lord of the manor had made it a centre for a day's hunting with his friends. The bearers of some of the proudest names in all Hungary had gathered in the high-arched rooms to laugh with the venerable pastor and to sample the excellent wines in his ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... upon him for a time. One fine summer evening he made the acquaintance of Kunz, a bookseller, publisher, and wine-dealer, at the pleasure-resort of Bug (close to Bamberg) in a characteristic manner. Kunz, an honest, jovial, good-natured giant, not lacking humour and gifted with a remarkable talent for mimicry and imitation, became little Hoffmann's fast friend—nay, his only real friend—during the whole of the time the latter remained in Bamberg. They were almost inseparable, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... Michael's are sending forth a jovial peal!" exclaimed Lancelot Kerridge, as he, Dick Harvey, and I were one day on board his boat fishing for mackerel, about two miles off the sea-port town of Lyme. "What they are saying I should mightily like to know, for depend on't it's something of importance. Haul in the lines, Ben!" ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... at myself in the glass I was shocked to find how gaunt and hollow-cheeked I had grown. My hair, which had up to this time been dark brown, had in a brief space turned quite gray over my ears, and whatever of good looks I had ever possessed had vanished utterly. Gottlieb, too, had altered from a jovial, sleek-looking fellow into a nervous, worried, ratlike little man. My creditors pressed me for their money and I was forced to close my house and live at a small hotel. The misery of those days is something I do not care to recall. We were both of us stripped, ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... which ascribes the name to a great drunken bout, held on the island by the Dutch discoverers, whereat they made certain of the natives most ecstatically drunk for the first time in their lives; who, being delighted with their jovial entertainment, gave the place the name of Mannahattanink—that is to say, the Island of Jolly Topers—a name which it continues to merit to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... author has written will present to us the mental and moral features of the man. It is particularly true in the case of Moore. He appears to us in Protean shapes, indeed, but not without an affinity between them. Small in stature, of jovial appearance; devoted to the gayest society; not very earnest in politics; a Roman Catholic in name, with but little practical religion, he pandered at first to a frivolous public taste, and was even more corrupt than ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... dance to the accompaniment of guitar, gramophone, mouth-organ, and accordion. The journey south was of no great interest, half on horseback, half in "galera," or public mail coach, with, as fellow passengers, a German traveller, a cure (most jovial of beings, who had brought enough food with him to feed a whole regiment), a head of police and his men, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lacked refinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of a servant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, who spoke his mind freely and plainly. He was often hearty, and could be thoroughly jovial; but he was not seldom rather rough and caustic of speech, and he was given to making remarks somewhat disparaging to human nature. He was aware of this trait in himself, and frankly admitted that he was nothing if not critical, and that it was his nature to spy into abuses. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... either side came close under the ear; and round his neck a red handkerchief with yellow ends. His linen certainly did credit to Mrs. Bumpkin's love of "tidiness," and altogether the prosecutor wore a clean and respectable appearance. His face was broad, round and red, indicating a jovial disposition and a temperament not easily disturbed, except when "whate" was down too low to sell and he wanted to buy stock or pay the rent: a state of circumstances which I believe has sometimes happened of late years. A white ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... he laughed with a careless jovial note. "Oh, you belong to the old towns back there," with a jerk of his head toward the rear. "In the wilderness we ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... present, was a thick-set, bearded man, rather jovial among those lean-jawed Texans. He carried a .44 rifle of an old pattern. "Wal, boys, if I'd knowed we was in fer some fun I'd hev fetched more shells. Only got one magazine full. Mebbe them new .44's will fit ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... conflagration, has fallen on comparatively evil days in modern times. In other words, the exterior of the original building, which dated from early in the seventeenth century, was demolished in 1888, to make room for a branch establishment of the Bank of England. Pepys knew the old house and spent many a jovial evening beneath its roof. It was thither, one April evening in 1667, that he took Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Knapp, the latter being the actress whom he thought "pretty enough" besides being "the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest that ever I heard in my life." The ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... said-"To Italy! no: before the courier can get thither, I shall be out again." it absolutely makes one laugh: as serious as the consequences might be, it is impossible to hate a politician of such jovial good-humour. I am told that he ordered the packet-boat to be stopped at Harwich till Saturday, till he should have time to determine what he would write to Holland. This will make the Dutch receive the news of the double revolution at ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... opened, and Miranda, who had been astir for nearly an hour and had the table already laid for breakfast, stepped into view, and, with a smile on her face that actually broadened its thinness dangerously near to the proportions of a genial and happy reciprocation of the jovial greeting, ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... up to a handsome house which stood on a rising ground before them, surrounded by its broad acres of well-cultivated land. "You must brighten up now, for I am going to take you to see an old friend of mine. Why, here he is!" and they were greeted by a jovial shout as a portly, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... the old Major, who had remained silent under the withering insolence of this young lieutenant, so I shook hands with him cordially and thanked him for his hospitality. He was a jovial old fellow ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... make an icicle of yourself?" a jovial voice called out; the next moment Dresser came up the steps. The portico shook as he stamped his feet. He wore a fur-lined coat, and carried a pair of skates. His face, which had grown perceptibly fuller since his connection with The Investor's Monthly, was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... stand Of the gallant Arethusa. And now we've driven the foe ashore, Never to fight with Britons more, Let each fill a glass To his favourite lass! A health to our captain, and officers true, And all that belong to the jovial crew, On ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... good, jovial Mr. Mountford,—and his regrets that he might not keep a pack, "a very small pack," of harriers, and his merry ways, and his love of good eating; of the first coming of Mr. Gray, and my lady's attempt to quench his sermons, when they tended to enforce any duty connected ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... home, cheered with the huzzas of his jovial companions, he began to consult those friends, what scheme was best to be adopted for the accomplishment of his desires. Some, boldly advised application to the father in defiance to the old priest; but that was the very last method his ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... gaze after the three blacks as they glided on right under the fence on the side farthest from the house, and close by where old Sam was contentedly digging, in perfect unconsciousness that the three great children were off to the bush for a jovial day, hunting for fat grubs, honey, snakes, and other picnic delicacies in ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... a pause, "and there can be no doubt it refers to me, for these were my uncle's solicitors—most agreeable men—who gave me the needful to fit me out, and it was their chief clerk—a Roman-nosed jovial sort of fellow, named Rundle something or other—who accompanied me to the ship when I left, and wished me a pleasant voyage, with a tear, or a drop of rain, I'm not sure which, rolling down his Roman nose. Well, but, as I said before, isn't it an ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... and of Mr. Lamb, a neighbouring farmer, whom they had sent for, and they proceeded to make their preparations to spend the night. After supper we were relieved to hear Mr. Lamb's cheerful voice, as he rode up in the dark with the jovial Dietrich, who had ridden out to meet him, and who, it appeared, was an old friend of his. I must say the pleasure of meeting was more on the Dutchman's side than on the Englishman's. By this time ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... soldier-king, Henry of Navarre, who had married her in 1609 to his nephew of Conde with the covert hope of finding him an accommodating husband; but the latter, alike defiant and uxorious, made the jovial Bearnois plainly understand that he had wedded the blooming Charlotte exclusively for himself. The gaillard monarch, however, at length grew so deeply enamoured that the prince, perceiving there was too much cause to fear ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... Sithonia's matrons wont, The rites triennial of the jovial god To tend. Those rites to conscious shade alone Confided. Rhodope, the brazen sound Shrill tinkling, hears by night;—by night the queen The palace quits, attir'd as Bacchus' rites Demand; and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... to see that down our way everybody's work eased up between 3.30 and 5. Then everyone visited about, exchanged newspapers, gossiped over counters. We changed stewards at three. Kelly, the easy-going, jovial (except at times) Irishman, took himself off, and a narrow-shouldered, small, pernickety German Jew came on for the rest of my time. When we closed up at nine he went to some other part of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... population of a colony. This is made up of young men who are the wasterels of the World; who have never done, and never will do themselves any good, and are a curse instead of a benefit to others. These are they who think themselves fine, jovial, spirited fellows, who disdain to work, and bear themselves as if life were merely a game which ought to be played out amid ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... moonlight. This, as well as the overshadowing Rock itself, they left behind without incident. Phormio chose devious alleys, and they met neither Scythian constables nor bands of roisterers. Only once the two passed a house bright with lamps. Jovial guests celebrated a late wedding feast. Clearly the two heard the marriage ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... jovial relations between the "guv'nor" and his partner could not be better indicated than by the name FitzGerald gives himself at the close, just before he once more signs his name in full. Well, perhaps the legal luminary of Lowestoft ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth

... of the young prince, replete with candor, was inflamed by these generous and romantic ideas suggested by Buckingham. He agreed to make application to the king for his approbation. They chose the moment of his kindest and most jovial humor; and, more by the earnestness which they expressed, than by the force of their reasons, they obtained a hasty and unguarded consent to their undertaking. And having engaged his promise to keep their purpose secret, they left him, in order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... Brother Timothy had ever a jest on his lips, and the more sober monks were sometimes scandalized at the noise and uproar he created in the convent refectory. Moreover, it was useless to exhort Timothy to cease jesting and study his Mass-book, for the simple reason that the jovial monk had never ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman

... Dicky Barrett, head-man of the Taranaki whaling-station, helped the Ngatiawa to repulse a noteworthy raid by the Waikato tribe. Afterwards, when the Ngatiawa decided to abandon their much-harried land, Barrett moved with them to Cook's Straits, where, in 1839, the Wakefields found him looking jovial, round, and ruddy, dressed in a straw hat, white jacket, and blue dungaree trousers, and married to a chief's daughter—a handsome and stately woman. It was Dicky Barrett who directed Colonel Wakefield ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... tolerable fairness. It is not at any rate for me to grumble at them. But of this I am quite sure, that did there exist some infallible test for finding out the best man, no man's name in this year would have been placed before his. He is not so jovial as the rest of us now, because he has partly failed; but the time will come when he will not fail." And then Arthur Wilkinson's health was toasted with a somewhat bated enthusiasm, but still with sufficient eclat to make every glass in Mr. Parker's house ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... the proverb takes it up with, "A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side"; and no one's to blame for that, save old Dame Fortune. So now a bumper to this jovial make-up between you. Lisbeth! you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... jovial old boy of 60 with rows of ribbons. He had three sons in the Army, and when they went "he wasn't going to be left ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... book-epidemic times at Leipzig and Frankfort! Hurrah for the waste-paper!—'twill make a royal feast. Your nimble brokers, Gluttony and Lust, bring you whole cargoes from the fair of life. Even Ambition, your grandpapa—War, Famine, Fire, and Plague, your mighty huntsmen, have provided you with many a jovial man-chase. Avarice and Covetousness, your sturdy butlers, drink to your health whole towns floating in the bubbling cup of the world-ocean. I know a kitchen in Europe where the rarest dishes have been served ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... paid to Miss Menie Gray. He saw from his lofty stand all the dumb show of gallantry, with the comfortable feelings of a famishing creature looking upon a feast which he is not permitted to share, and regarded every extraordinary frisk of the jovial Laird, as the same might have been looked upon by a gouty person, who apprehended that the dignitary was about to descend on his toes. At length, unable to restrain his emotion, he left the gallery and returned ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... a child And yet as iron willed as Hercules. In him were strength and gentleness so mixed That each upheld the other. He possessed The patient firmness of a loving heart. In power he out-kinged emperors, and yet His mercy was as boundless as his power. And he was jovial, laughter loving; still His heart was ever torn with suffering. There was divine compassion in the man, A godlike love and pity for his race. The world saw the full measure of that love When ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this, for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. "Not mine, I'm happy to say. My friends keep ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... storms on the planet Mars. A capital fact connected with this, is the want of belts, as in Jupiter and Saturn; for these planets have satellites, and if they are not massive enough, the belts may be produced by an obliquity in the axis of the Jovial and Saturnial vortices. If Mars had an aurora like the earth, it is fair to presume the telescope would ere this have shown it. He is, therefore, in equilibrium. In applying this reasoning to the earth, we perceive that a certain influence is due to the difference of temperature ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... on pretty girls rather than on old women,—and for all these reasons was very agreeable to the populace of Paris. He never went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops and abbes of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout women of Saint Germain d' Auxerre, when passing at night beneath the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized to hear the same voices ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Cornish Miners. It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post- horse,—though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied him home ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens

... was tall like his son, but here the resemblance ceased, for while Ballard the younger was round of visage and jovial, the banker was thin of face and repressive. He had a long, accipitrine nose which imbedded itself in his bristling white mustache, and he spoke in crisp staccato notes as though each intonation and breath were carefully measured by their monetary value. He paid out ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... on this latter point. M. de Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior mind. He was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens; but what chiefly occupied his mind was the mystery of a bungling brewer's son making so neat a shot. ...
— The American • Henry James

... a tiny brown-eyed creature, who looked absurdly young; she was kind, sprightly, and rather like a grouse. Mitchell was a jovial-looking man, with a high forehead, almost too much ease of ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... home,—much less, indeed, than his own bathing, which seems to be often both a religious and a social act. He would not think of entertaining his friends at a dinner party. But my coolies at the wayside inns spent jovial hours over their meals, and the gay Manchu or Chinese diners that I watched at the Peking hotel might have been Americans at the Waldorf-Astoria, barring a few details. And it seemed very Western, only it was quite Chinese, for the chief of the Kalgan Foreign Office to express ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife's confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... heart. I only like him better than Henry, Calvin, and the Church of Rome, who were bloody persecutors. Calvin was an execrable villain, and the worst of all; for he copied those whom he pretended to correct. Luther was as jovial as Wilkes, and served the cause of liberty ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... cousin to the king, came to Windsor to-day, to spend some time. Major Price, who had the honours to do to his chief attendant, Baron ——, missed us therefore at coffee ; but at tea we had them both, and my dear 'Mrs. Delany, as well as the jovial gourmand colonel, with whom I became prodigiously well acquainted, by making him 'teach me a few German phrases, which he always contrives, let me ask what question I may, to turn into some expression ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... to examine the groom, who answered his scrutinizing look by a jovial and intelligent smile. Ivan represented the type of the Russian serf in all his original beauty. He was small, but vigorous and robust; he had a fresh complexion, cheeks full and rosy, hair of a pale yellow, large soft eyes and a long chestnut beard, in which ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... appear or not; and so, on that head, as some say that no second part has ever been good, and others that enough has been already written about Don Quixote, it is thought there will be no second part; though some, who are jovial rather than saturnine, say, 'Let us have more Quixotades, let Don Quixote charge and Sancho chatter, and no matter what it may turn out, we ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... to say, ill-naturedly, "An umbrella would be useful when listening to him," or, "The justice rains verdicts." His eyes looked keen behind his spectacles, but if he took the glasses off his dulled glance seemed almost vacant. Though he was naturally gay, even jovial, he was apt to give himself too important and pompous an air. He usually kept his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and only took them out to settle his eye-glasses on his nose, with a movement ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... offence,'' Bernard bore him down, insolent and jovial. "'The Lord commended the unjust steward.' I foresaw that Lawrence would lie through thick and thin, and if I'd given it a thought either way I should have known you'd be brought down to back him up. And quite right ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... patrons, who contributed enough to the slender means he inherited to enable him to enter the Gymnasium at Carlsruhe. Leaving this institution with the reputation of a good classical scholar, he entered the University of Erlangen as a student of theology. Here his jovial, reckless temperament, finding a congenial atmosphere, so got the upperhand that he barely succeeded in passing the necessary examination, in 1780. At the end of two years, during which time he supported himself as a private tutor, he was ordained, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... fresh, and no other liquid that is thick and still; and let him give alms and earnestly pray God for his mercies." The union of ale and holy water forms an amusing, though unintentioned, satire on the jovial monk of the Middle Ages. I may remark that the old Saxon term "wood" is applied in these recipes to the frenzied. It survives in the Scotch "wud," i.e. mad.[12] Thus for the "wood-heart" it is ordered that "when day and night divide, then sing thou in the Church, litanies, that is, the names ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... of the desert, where allwhere is the softness of pure sand, Khalid is perfectly happy. Never did he seem so careless, our Scribe asserts, and so jovial and child-like in his joys. Far from the noise and strife of politics, far from the bewildering tangle of thought, far from the vain hopes and dreams and ambitions of life, he lives each day as if it were the last of the world. Here are joys manifold for a weary and persecuted ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... had a horror of pretension and conceit. Her child-like physiognomy had a certain playful and rebellious expression; slightly indecorous speech did not displease her. This idol of the aristocracy was simple and jovial, mingling in her conversation Gallic salt and Neapolitan gaiety. In contrast with so many princesses who weary their companions and are wearied by them, she amused herself and others. Entering a family celebrated by its legendary catastrophes, she had lost nothing ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... nor the "Clarion" were to be admitted into the house, which a manservant went to get in a mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance, were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... of the sun! refulgent Summer comes, In pride of youth; While Autumn, nodding o'or the yellow plain, Comes jovial on." ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... material principle as perfectly as his master does the intellectual or ideal. He is of the earth, earthy. Sly, selfish, sensual, his dreams are not of glory, but of good feeding. His only concern is for his carcass. His notions of honor appear to be much the same with those of his jovial contemporary Falstaff, as conveyed in his memorable soliloquy. In the sublime night-piece which ends with the fulling-mills—truly sublime until we reach the denouement—Sancho asks his master: "Why need you go about this adventure? It is main dark, and there is never ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... his lithe muscles slipped and rippled under his white skin in a rhythm of harmony. His broad chest was bare as his arms, and his chubby apple-red cheeks shone with perspiration which oozed from his every pore. He was singing to himself in happy unconcern about his being a jovial monk contented with his lot. Two horses were tied inside the shop waiting to be shod, chafing and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... had, as a very young and sentimental girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of affection he met with a sarcasm and even hostility that people knowing the count's good heart, and seeing no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... apartment, I was in the midst of packing when the television phone called me. The jovial features of "Dutch" Higgins, my one-time college room-mate and now one of the much-maligned engineers of the Undersea Tube, smiled back at me ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen

... jovial Hans. "I've only one trouble in the world, and that does not trouble me. My wife complains because ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... hot night the annual flitting of the angels had not yet come to pass, and notwithstanding the heat the last dance of the season was to take place at the Club House. The occasion was an exceptional one, as the jovial sounds that issued from the officers' mess-house testified. Round after round of cheers followed the noisy toast, filling the night with the merry uproar that echoed far and wide. A confusion of voices succeeded these; and then by degrees the babel died down, and ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell



Words linked to "Jovial" :   jolly, joviality, joyous, jocund, mirthful



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