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Knobby   Listen
adjective
Knobby  adj.  
1.
Full of, or covered with, knobs or hard protuberances.
2.
Irregular; stubborn in particulars. (Obs.) "The informers continued in a knobby kind of obstinacy."
3.
Abounding in rounded hills or mountains; hilly. (U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Knobby" Quotes from Famous Books



... still knobby with bandages, but the lads were in good spirits, and seemed to have some secret with Martha that involved a deal of whispering and some chuckling. After the traces of bread and butter were all wiped away, they came hobbling up (for the poor knees were sadly stiff and lame), and wedged ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... perfectly well that Mrs. Newt had called, but he liked to show himself how vast his power was. He liked to see fine ladies in splendid drawing-rooms bowing, down before his ungrammatical throne, and metaphorically kissing his knobby red hand. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... through his meal, and then ran up to grandmother's room. She put out her wrinkled hand, thin to be sure, but still slender and smooth, with no knobby joints. A proud sort of beauty illumined the old face, though the eyes ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... elliptical basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... Georgie's stocking—bulging and knobby it was now—and arranged his more bulky presents beneath it on the floor. Then Thankful went into the kitchen and Emily accompanied her. The morning broke, pale and gray. The wind had subsided and it no longer rained. With the returning daylight ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... returned his grandson, disrespectfully; "you're blind or else—or else—" He paused, open-mouthed, a look of wonder struggling its way to expression upon him, gradually conquering every knobby outpost of his countenance. He struck his fat hands together. "Where's Joe Louden?" he asked, sharply. "I want to see him. Did you leave ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... putting a large basket into the boat when she arrived, and before they were off Phebe came running down with a queer, knobby bundle ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... He was tall and knobby-kneed, spoke with a squeak at the end of his deeper sentences, and about his tired eyes he had made a red circle with camwood. Round his head he had twisted a wire so tightly that it all but cut the flesh: this was necessary, for B'chumbiri had a headache which never ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... don't live here," said Caroline shortly. She felt untidy and badly dressed beside this graceful thing standing in a faint cloud of subtle perfume of her own; her sleeves were too short and her heavy shoes knobby and worn. She wanted furiously to smell sweet like that; and the golden bag—oh, to feel it, powerful ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the noblest of ladies, but ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Clanging. I am the Poker the straight and the strong, Prone in the fire grate, Black at the nether end, Knobby and nebulous. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various

... thing to have happen that a silence immediately fell, while two of the girls hastily wiped off their cheeks. A look of happiness dawned through the surprise on however, his mother's face, and she shyly kept her hand on Asa's knobby shoulder as he entered the house. Asa was the center of attraction at the supper table where he ran the Potter twins a close second in the amount he ate. The girls, perfectly silent, sat staring at him round-eyed; and his father, it larger edition of himself, ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... burnished, and quartzless traps. Even there the hands were hardly required, although our poor feet regretted the want of Spartelles.[EN24] Here the track debouched upon an inverted arch, with a hill, or rather a tall and knobby outcrop of rock, on either flank of the keystone. The inland or eastward view was a map of the region over which we had travelled; a panorama of little chains mostly running parallel with the great range, and separated from it by Wadys, lateral, oblique, and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... is written, Ventrem omnipotentem, who were all very honest men, and merry blades. And of this race came St. Fatgulch and Shrove Tuesday (Pansart, Mardigras.). Others did swell at the shoulders, who in that place were so crump and knobby that they were therefore called Montifers, which is as much to say as Hill-carriers, of whom you see some yet in the world, of divers sexes and degrees. Of this race came Aesop, some of whose excellent words and deeds ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... be Master Crocodile's sleepy-time. He is too lazy to waddle in search of a dinner far from the river where he lives. But any animal or even a man-swimmer had best be careful how he ventures into the water near the Crocodile's haunts. For what seems to be a greenish-brown, knobby log of wood floating on the water, has little bright eyes which are on the lookout for anything which moves. And below the water two great jaws are ready to open and swallow in the prey of ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... horses are fond; Prasophyllum elatum, sweetly scented. A new composite with white blossoms, the rays narrow and numerous. Sky clear; cumuli to the S. W.; wind from the westward. Ridges visible to the N.N.E. and N.E. At the outskirts of the scrub, the short-tailed sleeping lizard with knobby scales was frequent: one of them contained six eggs. We camped outside of the scrub, surrounded by small tufts of the Bricklow Acacia. Droves of kangaroos entered the scrub; their foot-paths crossed ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... her facial charms by wearing "water-waves." Water-waves are scarcely to be commended for any type of face, and they are especially unbecoming to the woman who is conspicuously "roly-poly." The round eyes, knobby nose, and round mouth are brought into unattractive distinctness by being re-duplicated in the circular effects of the hair. This mode of dressing the hair makes a short ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... The same old room we occupied years ago, however comfortless then, has a familiar air of welcome now. There is surely some little trace of self, some unseen spider-thread of attachment clinging to the walls, the old chair, the forlorn wash-stand, and the knobby four-poster, that holds the hardest of beds, the most consumptive of pillows, and a bolster as round, as white, and as hard, as a cathedral mass-candle. Heigho, Hotel Waverley! Here am I again; but where are the familiar faces? ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... was tall, spare, and bent, about sixty, and the possessor of a pleasant knobby face half surrounded by a gray beard that stretched from ear to ear beneath his lower jaw, dropped his paper and scrutinized the young men benevolently. They went over to him, and Larcher explained their intrusion with as ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Warriston Cemetery: a formidable yet beloved spot, for children love to be afraid,—in measure as they love all experience of vitality. Here I beheld myself some paces ahead (seeing myself, I mean, from behind) utterly alone in that uncanny passage; on the one side of me a rude, knobby, shepherd's staff, such as cheers the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod like a billiard cue, appeared to accompany my progress; the stiff sturdily upright, the billiard cue inclined confidentially, like one whispering, towards ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... river six miles wide is the safest place that can be found at the South for insurrectionary conversation. Even there I used to wonder whether the Southerners had not given secret-service money to the alligators who occasionally stuck their knobby noses above the flood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... fear to such an extent that my boots appeared to gape, and my bonnet nodded on its peg, before I gave in. Having piled my cloak, bag, rubbers, books and umbrella on the lower shelf, I drowsily swarmed onto the upper one, tumbling down a few times, and excoriating the knobby portions of my frame in the act. A very brief nap on the upper roost was enough to set me gasping as if a dozen feather beds and the whole boat were laid over me. Out I turned; and after a series of convulsions, which caused my neighbor to ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... hat, bearing his face heavenward as he talked, and not so much aware of me as appreciating the things he was saying. And sometimes he was manifestly talking to himself and airing his outlook. He carried a walking-stick, a manly, homely, knobby, donnish walking-stick. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... underneath his pillow in case any one should steal it during the night. Then he went to bed and tried to sleep. But he was too excited; besides the gold under his pillow made it so hard and knobby that it was ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... Years after that, he was Judge West of the Superior Court. Now he was simply Joe West, a tall, lanky boy with a long rosy face and a high forehead. His arms came too far through his jacket sleeves, and showed his wrists, which looked unnaturally knobby and bony. He went barefoot all summer long, and was ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... habitually slitted, and his mouth oddly off-center, always poised between a mirthless grin and a snarl. His long black hair curled under at the base of his skull, and his hands were covered with heavy gold and silver rings. There was one for each finger and thumb, and all of them were set with knobby ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... know. As tall as himself and all shiny and slick. It was slim and sort o' knobby like this wood—what's the name of it, now?—they make fish poles out of. Only the real big-bugs in spiritualism use 'em. They're dangerous. You wouldn't caich me touchin' it or goin' in there even now. I says to Mrs. Kraus, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... but too late. One wing flopped over, and caught in a knobby old branch of the apple tree, and in a minute there was a big hole right ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... was leading Dawn to the devil, and would not credit that no one is more anxious than I am to save her from the footlights, or that the best way to stave her off is this training. My secret ambition regarding her," I said, critically observing the strong knobby profile, "is that within the next five years she should marry some nice youngster with means to place her in a setting befitting ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... and bare for beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humble description. Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by an eccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map, and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender arm with knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club. We sit and watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight. Its curves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villages and dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the white spires, the summer cottages of wealth, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... things that he knew she had spread out for her own sensuous delight of contemplation. He fetched up for a moment at a drawing easel, his reiterant cry checked on his lips, and threw a laugh of recognition and appreciation at the sketch, just outlined, of an awkward, big-boned, knobby, weanling colt caught in the act of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... without the comfort of a fire, they were early on the march; but it was not until the sun was well out that they saw what manner of man their new guide was. A strange monkey-figure —very black, with wrinkled skin about the elbows, thin arms, knobby knees, a bulging stomach, and round bright eyes! He carried a little bow, a sheaf of tiny arrows, and wore the glittering chain and knife round his neck. He took the "upper road," and was very ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... into taking a hot, dusty, tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on out at Toledo; no need for his presence there. If he could lay hands on the idiot who had sent him that forged telegram—well, the angered Mr. Propbridge indicated with a gesture of a large and knobby fist what he would do to the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... other three had been terrible to look on, this one was more terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron plate, and she had a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club in her hand She halted by the bodies of her sisters, and bitter tears streamed down ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... but slender and apt to fall; light green foliage; truss 8 to 10 inches, with 8 to 10 berries; berry scarlet, conical, high-shouldered, somewhat flattened at the tip, regular in shape and uniform in size, a little rough, knobby, with seeds set in deep pits; flesh but moderately firm, and very white; flavor of the best; calyx spreading and recurving; season late and long-continued; very productive—one of the very best; size 3 to 4 1/2 inches. It succeeds well on light soils and under the Southern ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... call it anything but "the Jew's house." He killed a few of them for it, but that did not serve. At last, by advice of his confessor, he had the facade ornamented with projecting knobs of stucco, and the work was done. It is called to this day "the knobby house." ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... pointing, with knobby forefinger, to the first, "is the Reverend Mother, Herself—large, and pure, and noble. . . . Nay, hop not too close, Sir Redbreast! When we enter her chamber we kneel at the threshold, till she bids us draw nearer. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold and malignant eyes—a brute, every detail of him—my heart sank lower still. And when I ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... within, awakened me like the shock of cold water. Redmond was awaiting us with a lantern. By the horse block lay the mass of something indeterminate which I presently saw to be sacks full of something knobby. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White



Words linked to "Knobby" :   knobbly, knob, unshapely



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