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Lank   Listen
verb
Lank  v. i. & v. t.  To become lank; to make lank. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books



... ardor young Pressaeus brings, Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings; Lank, harmless frog! with forces hardly grown, He darts the reed in combats not his own, Which, faintly tinkling on Troxartas' shield, Hangs at the point ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank and brown. As is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... The howling sea of my adversity. At length o'er Sana, in the act to swoop, I stood like a young eagle on a crag. The traveller passed me with suspicious fear: I asked for nothing; I was not a thief. The lean dogs snuffed around me: my lank bones, Fed on the berries and the crusted pools, Were a scant morsel. Once, a brown-skinned girl Called me a little from the common path, And gave me figs and barley in a bag. I paid her with a kiss, with nothing more, And she looked glad; for I was beautiful, And virgin as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... on his hips, he roared without restraint while they stood before him lank and straight, as unexpected as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trapdoor in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... Jim Blair hoisted his lank six feet out of the old rocker, and crossed the room, running a nervous hand through his cornshuck hair. She's only thirty, he thought, and I'm three years older. That's awfully young to have bred three kids and lost them. He took her in his arms. "I know how tough it is. It's bad enough ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot

... investigation and had interested in her project the lank mountain-woman who presided at the counter, she lost fear of the result. Together they made careful study of the fashion-papers which the woman had preserved and which the girl had, the night before, remembered with such vividness. Through discussion and reiterated reassurance from her ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... does not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures—now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot—some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to us to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... the canoe. One squatted forward, another rested his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy, stockily built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt hats crowning lank, black hair long innocent ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... ripe acquaintance with the vintages of the world which had been so plainly displayed on it during its owner's visit to the country. Again, hair and eyebrows were no longer black, but fair; and his hair was no longer curly and luxuriant, but thin and lank. His moustache had vanished, and along with it the dress of a well-to-do provincial man of business. He wore a livery of the Charmeraces, and at that early morning hour had not yet assumed the blue waistcoat which is an integral part ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... more the penance the more the sin, The more he whopped him the more he drank; Till his hair fell out and his cheeks fell in, And his corpulent figure grew long and lank. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... old gentleman, the very type of the old "pantaloon" whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender and rather delicately-cut features terminating in a long, narrow and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sombre cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently very poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... first of these clever and successful burlesques, Mr. Webb has travestied rather the ideas than the manner of Mr. Reade; and one who turned to "Liffith Lank" from the wonderful parodies in "Punch's Prize Novelists," or those exquisitely finished pieces of mimicry, the "Condensed Novelists" of the Californian Harte, would feel its want of fidelity to the method and style of the author burlesqued. Yet the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... hotel in Lagrange, a rival establishment, that bore the reputation of being much the worse in point of comfort. It was owned by a widow, and this widow had a son—a lank, overgrown youth of eighteen. His poverty, on one point, was the greatest I ever knew. He could have been appropriately selected as the hero of a certain popular novel by Wilkie Collins. No name had ever been given him by his parents. In his infancy they spoke of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... being once, his peaked head With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread; His visage blue, in length was like your own Seen in the convex of a table-spoon. His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face, To stop at either ear had just the grace, A hideous rift: ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... ag'in," she said and Lou laughed with tears in her eyes. "Why, it's nothin' to be away from home a week, mother. And just think how happy I am." But there were more tears; and Jasper stormed at a dog and shook the wagon wheel to satisfy himself that it was sound. The driver, as lank a lout as ever slept in a stable, sat upon a board seat, stuffing his greedy mouth with ginger cake. He took up the lines and clucked to the horses, but it was discovered that something more remained to be said and he was ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... "How be you, Jethros?" from the more courageous there,—but the farm team jogs on, leaving a discomfited gathering, into the side street, up an alley, and into the cool, ammonia-reeking sheds of lank Jim Sanborn's livery stable. No obsequiousness from lank Jim, who has the traces slipped and the reins festooned from the bits almost before Jethro has lifted Cynthia to the floor. Jethro, walking between Cynthia and her father, led the way, Ephraim, Lem, and Sue Hallowell following, the children, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of picturesqueness to the final proceedings. The sextet included a full-blooded Cherokee; a consumptive ex-dentist out of Kansas, who from killing nerves in teeth had progressed to killing men in cold premeditation; a lank West Virginia mountaineer whose family name was the name of a clan prominent in one of the long-drawn-out hill-feuds of his native State; a plain bad man, whose chief claim to distinction was that he hailed originally from the Bowery in New York City; ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... has been waged regarding the original home of the Sumerians and the particular racial type which they represented. One theory connects them with the lank-haired and beardless Mongolians, and it is asserted on the evidence afforded by early sculptural reliefs that they were similarly oblique-eyed. As they also spoke an agglutinative language, it is suggested that ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... a tall, gaunt, dark man, whose pallid face looked ghastly in contrast with his damp, lank, black hair, that seemed pasted to his cheeks by the thick perspiration, and with his black coat and pantaloons that hung loosely on ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... disposed to make a meal of himself. Mr. Monday, who was a hearty beef and brandy personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the dinner, which I make no doubt will be substantial and decent. Had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn't bear it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... Maryette Courtray, called "Carillonnette," for her Yankee lover still lay in his distant hospital—her muleteer, "Djack." So mules might bray, and negroes fill the Sainte Lesse meadows with their shouting laughter; and the lank, hawk-nosed Yankee muleteers might saunter clanking into the White Doe in search of meat or drink or tobacco, or a glimpse of the pretty bell-mistress, for all ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... use, not grace, but the man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair, on the lank, undulating ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... still. He saw before him the tall thin figure of a half-breed. He had black lank hair which hung loosely down almost on to his shoulders. His face was the color of mud, and he was possessed of a pair of keen gray eyes and a thin-hooked nose. His face wore a lofty look of command, and was stamped by an expression of the unmost resolution. He spoke easily and showed ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... his head high and looking over the heads of all he passed with a fixed, far gaze. He had a hatchet-face, sallow, with lantern jaws, a petulant mouth, hot eyes that showed too much white above their pupils. A lank black mane greased his collar. His garments, shoddy but whole, were stained and bleached in spots, apparently the work of acids, and so wrinkled and shapeless as to suggest that their owner slept without ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... shoulders, the air of discouragement—suddenly there flashed across Billie's mind a different picture, the picture of a tall lank man with stooped shoulders and dark, deep-set eyes, ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... like proportion less will hurt them. A country fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country lassie at her wheel, Her dizzens done, she's unco weel; [dozens] But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst, [positive] They loiter, lounging, lank, and lazy; Though de'il haet ails them, yet uneasy; [devil a bit] Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless. And e'en their sports, their balls, and races, Their galloping ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... little hill, and there over in a draw was the cause of their fear,—a big old lank Cinnamon. He was feeding along, heading for a thicket of about ten acres. The lad who was with me stayed and watched him, while I hurried back, unhobbled the horses, and rushed them into camp. I hustled out every man, and they cinched their hulls on those ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... to tell truth, has a little fear of the wayward propensities of the parson's son in misleading Phil—recommends trial of the discipline of a certain Parson Brummem, who fills the parish-pulpit upon Bolton Hill. This dignitary was a tall, lank, leathern-faced man, of incorruptible zeal and stately gravity, who held under his stern dominion a little flock of two hundred souls, and who, eking out a narrow parochial stipend by the week-day office of teaching, had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... still grey light when Guapo climbed up to the rock. Against the sky his tall, lank form could be traced in all its outlines. For some moments he sat in a serious and reflective mood—evidently busy with thoughts about the "poison-trees." His appetite, however, soon got the better of him; and he set to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... mountaineer and his wife apparently perfectly unconcerned as to what was going on—but nothing suspicious was found, and Calhoun had to confess himself baffled. But after Morgan's column had passed, a tall, lank girl with unkempt hair might have been seen coming down the mountainside, carrying a long rifle in her hand. Swiftly and surely as a deer she leaped from rock to rock, and soon neared the cabin. Carefully concealing her rifle beneath a huge rock, she came slowly up to the door ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... had just left was standing by a column, in motionless abstraction, looking over the distant garden. But the kindly, humorous face was almost tragic with an intensity of weariness! Every line of those strong, rustic features was relaxed under a burden which even the long, lank, angular figure—overgrown and unfinished as his own West—seemed to be distorted in its efforts to adjust itself to; while the dark, deep-set eyes were abstracted with the vague prescience of the prophet and the martyr. Shocked at that sudden change, Brant felt his cheek burn with shame. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... A tall, lank man of fifty, with a thin, sharp face and nose, whom the lads had noticed sitting opposite them, reading a pamphlet of some kind, came nearer and seemed to take an unusual interest in the sharpening of the knife. His keen ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... dance ends, Andrew Smith points with his fiddle-bow to a figure seen approaching from the background, a tall, lank, kindly-faced boy, dressed like the others but with an ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... second room, called back, "I've found it, and here's another, of a woman who seemed to fit in with a Botticelli scheme. She was the long lank type." ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... we continued to follow. Passed through groves of hazel overrun by wild vines, but both grapes and nuts as yet green. The plateaus become gradually larger and almost continuous, and the hills separated and diminished in size, those on the right being covered with the lank deodar, while those on the left possessed only a bright green mantle of grass, far away in front they altogether ended, and the open sky above the valley was alone visible. And now an unusual occurrence presented itself. We were following the stream upwards ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... was suddenly interrupted—a shadow fell across the entrance door of the pretty summer-house. An elderly woman, with a thin face and lank, figure, ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... St. Nicholas Hotel a lank and shabby man had mounted a cracker box, and was evidently making a speech, but Berkley could distinguish nothing he said because of the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... she had just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up, rather shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that streamed through the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that her thin, sunburned face was very pale under its tan. She had two braids of lank, thick, tow-coloured hair and very odd eyes—"white eyes," the manse children thought, as she stared at them half defiantly, half piteously. They were really of so pale a blue that they did seem almost white, especially when contrasted ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to the steamer, I found a party of country people, mostly young persons of both sexes, thin and lank figures, by no means equal, as productions of the country, to their bough apples. They passed through the fine spacious cabin on the upper deck, extending between the state-rooms the whole length of the steamer. At length they came to a large mirror, which stood at the stern, and seemed ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... as he did the last time Marcy saw him—too lazy to take a long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as shiftless, but ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... The birds were lank black clivers (Plotus), exceedingly wild; the African roller (Coracias); halcyons of several species, especially a white and black kingfisher, nimble and comely; many swallows, horn-bills, and wild pigeons which made the bush ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... deserves a word. The young breeds run to extremes of good looks or ill; and in his case it was the latter. In downright English he was hideous. A shock of intractable, lank hair hung over what he had of a forehead; and underneath rolled a pair of whitey-blue eyes, with a villainous cast in one of them. Some accident had carried Nature's work even further, for one swarthy cheek was divided from temple to chin by a dirty white scar. He wore a ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... came up, mounted on a raw-boned nag, lank as the remains of a twenty-years lawsuit. Zoe, at a hint from the Colonel, handed him a cup of Cognac, which he quaffed without breathing, smacking his lips emphatically after it. He called out to the landlady,—"Take care of my knapsack, dame! You had better burn the house ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... common impulse of commiseration, and by reverential regard akin to such as one feels when standing beside the tomb of a dear friend, the married couples and the lank bachelor bent their steps from the lawn to the rubble-strown site of the burnt mansion-house. The foundation stones indicated the size and location of the several rooms formerly occupying the ground floor. Danvers and his wife sat down upon ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... career of crime,—but the villain knew his own neck was in danger, and being conscious of perfidy, now hated Hunter for his momentary suspicion. As he leaned over the insensible man, his light, bleary eyes gleaming with ferocious satisfaction, his lank, shambling figure, and yellow, matted hair hanging in elf locks round his sharp visage, he looked like an unclean bird of prey hovering over a carcase. And a carcase it was over which he bent his ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions of their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe's victory. One of these worthies—a tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense longitude—purported to be no less a personage than General George Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army, such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented by similar ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... uncommon as common sense. The titles of his various books are inviting and informing, as Seaweed and What We Seed. He wrote several parodies on sensational novels of his time. Griffith Gaunt, he made fun of as "Liffith Lank"; St. Elmo, as "St. Twelmo." A Wicked Woman was another absurd tale. But I like best a large volume, "John Paul's Book, moral and instructive, travels, tales, poetry, and like fabrications, with several portraits of the author and other spirited engravings." ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shriveling up into nothings; the eyes—those eyes that shone like heaven—being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of the ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... said; and she bent over him and arranged the cushions for him more comfortably. He looked just like a great lank tired child. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden

... around her knees and gazed out forlornly over the empty waters. Not a sail, not a trail of smoke broke the blueness of the bay. With another sigh, this time of disappointment, she turned her gaze landward, and beheld there nothing but lank marsh grass and sand ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... sideways along the hall—only makes a few shots of visual brightness in the sober scene. Seriousness is stamped everywhere; on the broad-bulging temples of the Russian oculist, on the egg-shaped skull and lank white hair of the Heidelberg professor, on the open countenance of the Hungarian architect, on the weak, narrow lineaments of the neurotic Hebrew poet; it gives dignity to red hair and freckles, tones down the grossness of too-fleshy cheeks, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and whirled around. In the rush of incoming passengers, they had been looking for some one smaller, more childish than this tall girl who stood before them. She was not at all pretty. Her brown hair was too straight and lank and light, and her grey eyes had a trick of narrowing themselves to a line; but her expression was frank and open, and she wore her simple grey suit with an air which spoke volumes for her past training. Across her arm hung a bright golf cape with a tag end of grey ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... smile as he coolly regarded them. The fearlessness of ignorance is often as unassailable as the most experienced valor, and the awe-inspiring invaders were at first embarrassed and then humanly angry. A lank figure to the right made a forward movement of impotent rage, but was checked by the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... see one figure clearly still. He is tall and thin, with a white peaked face of which the long inquisitive nose is the outstanding feature. His hair is lank and uncared for; his russet smock, tied in at the waist, wants brushing; his untidy cross-gartered hose shows up the meagerness of his legs. No knightly figure this, yet I look upon him very tenderly. For it is Roger Scurvilegs on his ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... see Purdy's plump, red-cheeked English mother, who was as jolly and happy as her boy, hugging the loaf to her bosom while she cut round after round of bread and butter and jam, for two cormorant throats. And the elder boy, long-limbed and lank, all wrist and ankle, had invariably been the hungrier of the two; for, on the glossy damask of the big house, often not enough food was set to satisfy the growing appetites of himself and his sisters.—"Dickybird, can't you see us, with our backs to the wall, in that little yard of yours, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless, "That these commentators always kept ...
— The Republic • Plato

... opened, and a thin, lank old man, with a fierce peaked face like a bird of prey, came out upon the steps. His face softened, however, into friendliness when he saw Feversham, and a smile played upon his lips. A stranger might have thought ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death[285]. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding: he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrophula were deeply visible[286]. He also wore his hair[287], which was straight and stiff, and separated behind: and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... ancient mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown. As ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston (and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... and a great, huge-boned, lank man crowded eagerly up to Thure's side, "jest say them words over ag'in; an' say 'em loud, so that Sal can hear. She's bin callin' me a fool regular 'bout every hour since we started for th' diggings. Says she'll eat all th' gold I find an' won't have no stumick-ake neither. ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... daylight enough to see his face when I went to him; and what a change in a fortnight! He was paler and more worn, I thought, than even in those dreadful days in the plains before we left India. His hair seemed to me to have grown long and lank; his eyes were like blazing lights projecting out of his white face. He got hold of my hand in a cold and tremulous clutch, and waved to everybody to go away. "Go away—even mother," he said; "go away." This went to her heart; for she did not like that even ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... tempered as to exhibit not the least token of having suffered by the feat it had performed. He then took the king's hand, and looking on the size and muscular strength which it exhibited, laughed as he placed it beside his own, so lank and thin, so inferior in brawn ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... lank, In scuffling circle or in mural rank, Of misery mechanic They look the wooden symbols; nought to show That even well-starched linen's sheeny snow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various

... him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... both changed a good deal since the day the Holts found them sitting there. There seemed a greater difference in their ages than there had seemed then, for Katie, as bonnie and fresh as ever, was almost a woman now. Davie was a boy still, long and lank, and not nearly so handsome as he used to be, but there was promise of strength and good looks too, when a few years should be over. He had worked constantly and hard for the last year, and he stooped a little sometimes when he was ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... the town of Boston had become marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parliament. Later, in 1775, Ethan Allen had startled Captain Delaplace by presenting his lank figure at the captain's bedside and demanding the surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of the "Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." In the language of Daniel Webster, "A spirit pervaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow who had never distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could not catch well or bat well in ball. He could not throw well enough to make his mark in that famous Western game of bull-pen. He did ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... Whitefoot moved like a lank and ghostly wolf through the tall grass and crops, skirting the barer places and keeping close in to the dusky verges of the hedges. All went well with him till he took the ha-ha ditch at his usual racing pace, and was instantly wrapped up by a net into a kicking ball ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... her. Miss Tolley bowed; and allowed herself to be drawn away by a lank-haired young man who had likewise been waiting for an opening. He represented the Uplift Film Association of Chicago, and was wishful to know if Miss Tolley would consent to altering the last chapter and so providing "Running Waters" with a happy ending. He pointed out ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... splendid traveler, coming out of her padded stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim, her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides their last polish, as Allys and her train swept ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... laugh from the crowd in which Berry joined heartily, rolling his eyes and contorting his limbs so as to show in the completest manner the striking contrast between his lank, stringy, meanly-clad frame and the full, round, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... long, lank, awkward youth, felling trees on the little claim, building his homely log-cabin, without floor or windows, teaching himself arithmetic and grammar in the evening by the light of the fireplace. In his eagerness to know the contents of Blackstone's Commentaries, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... of rapid walking proved the squaw's words. The lank tree-trunks, down aisles of which they had been passing, became lost in a wealth of dense undergrowth. It was here that the woman paused for her bearings. But her fault was brief, and in a few moments ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... shrieked and got in the wrong place, as usual. C. and the train men and the stationmaster and our responsible boys heaved and tugged and directed, ordered, commanded. At length the human element was loaded to its places and locked in. Then the mules had to be urged up a very narrow gang-lank into a dangerous-looking car. Quite sensibly they declined to take chances. We persuaded them. The process was quite simple. Two of the men holding the ends at a safe distance stretched a light strong cord across the beasts' hind legs, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... was a very awful penance to them at first. We used to hear them splashing away at the pump and puffing like porpoises; and they came in with shining faces and lank hair in wet rats' tails, the foremost of which they pulled on all occasions of sitting down, getting ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the ship mostly, but when we sight a big merchantman with maybe a long nine or two aboard, then's when Stede Bonnet comes on deck. That Frenchman we sunk tonight, blast her bloody spars"—here the lank pirate interrupted himself to curse his luck, and continued—"probably loaded with sugar and Jamaica rum from Martinique and headed up for the French provinces. Well, we'll never know—that's sure!" He paused, bit off the end of a rope of black tobacco and meditatively surveyed the boy. "I'm from ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... and his garb, from the minute regulations then existing in regard to dress, showed at any rate his pretensions to nobility. This proud cavalier was followed by one servant only, who carried a capacious wallet, not over-well replenished with provision, as was apparent from its long lank shape and attenuated proportions. His master's cloak was slung on the other shoulder; and his belt displayed some implements that appeared alike formidable as means of offence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... will favour thee. If thou dost bring with thee a del'cate messe, An olio or so, a pretty lass, Brisk wine, sharp tales, all sorts of drollery, These if thou bringst (I say) along with thee, You shall feed highly, friend: for, know, the ebbs Of my lank purse are full of spiders webs; But then again you shall receive clear love, Or what more grateful or more sweet may prove: For with an ointment I will favour thee My Venus's and Cupids gave to me, Of which once smelt, the gods thou ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long, meager legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together. There ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the streets a little in the early morning, when the multitudes are on their way to their work, one is amazed at the number of persons who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in Manchester the people have not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid, flabby faces, incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such startling numbers only in London, though consumption carries off a horde of victims annually ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... so, and Kennedy regarded Bruce with a solemn, weighty stare. He was a lank, lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam's-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... the fish—some of them greedily devouring those they had already taken, and others wandering restlessly about, or eagerly observing the movements of the fish in the water. One and all of them looked fierce and famished, their bodies showing gaunt and flaky, and their enormous limbs having a lank angular appearance, that gave them a still greater resemblance to heifers—only heifers that had been ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... of this moving world, Fanny made note of the many interesting exhibitions about her of country ignorance and enthusiasm. At one place she stopped near a tall, lank farmer, whose cowhide boots had left their massive imprint on every roadway on the grounds. He stood chewing a wisp of hay plucked from an exhibit, while he gazed in delight at the harvesters, plows and sheaves of wheat which stretched away before ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... she stood smiling up into the dark face above her, she looked what she was; a girl in the flush of early womanhood, a prairie girl, wild as the flowers which grow hidden in the lank grass of the plains, as wayward as the breezes which sweep them from every point ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... domes stood a double throne, on which sat the Ki of Twi—a pair of gray-bearded and bald-headed men who were lean and lank and stoop-shouldered. They had small eyes, black and flashing, long hooked noses, great pointed ears, and they were smoking two pipes from which the smoke curled in exactly the same circles ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... would think it, in this lump," said he, looking at a fat, rolled up, heavy breathing sleeper; "but what signify brains to such a lazy dog? I might kick him for my football this half hour before I should get him awake. This lank jawed harlequin beside him is a handy fellow, to be sure; but, then, if he has hands, he has no head—and he'd be afraid of his own shadow too, by this light, he is such a coward! And Townsend, why, he has puns in plenty; ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... irritant of the lank youth's voice and presence, Iskender felt dismay at his own boastfulness, and repented of it humbly before Allah. He knew that a jealous eye is fixed upon the heart of every man to mark when pride leaps up and straightway blight it. To show elation was to court calamity. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... tricks for harmless diversion sake. These two were so indefatigable in taking Don Quixote out to dance that they tired him down, not only in body but in spirit. It was a sight to see the figure Don Quixote made, long, lank, lean, and yellow, his garments clinging tight to him, ungainly, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,—a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—who, at the moment of their coming, was wrathfully "shoo-ing" ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... joined the smokers about the fire. His appearance did not settle all the questions in the minds of his brother rangers. They saw simply a loose, lank youth with tow-coloured, sun-burned hair and a berry-brown, ingenuous face that wore a ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... presently, to the last peer of that line. The estate is two thousand a year, and so compact as to have but seventeen houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Before the altar lies a lank brass knight, hight William Fienis, chevalier, who obiit c.c.c.c.v. that is in 1405. By the altar is a beautiful tomb, all in our trefoil taste, varied into a thousand little canopies and patterns, and two knights reposing on their backs. These were Thomas, Lord Dacre, and his only son Gregory, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... figure was Captain John Sharkey. His thin, drawn, clean-shaven face was corpse-like in its pallor, and all the suns of the Indies could but turn it to a more deathly parchment tint. He was part bald, with a few lank locks of tow-like hair, and a steep, narrow forehead. His thin nose jutted sharply forth, and near-set on either side of it were those filmy blue eyes, red-rimmed like those of a white bull-terrier, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... slunk about as if their spirits were depressed. The smoke of ages was on the walls and roof, and the tables and benches at one side had a sadly dilapidated appearance. The master was an Indian of lightish hue, his long, lank hair already turning grey with age, and perhaps with care. Several Indian women were moving about round a fire at the farther end of the room, preparing a meal for a somewhat numerous company assembled there. The women about the house were ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... overbalanced himself and dropped off the post, but only to stay down and caress a little black-and-white dog, which trotted up wagging its stump of a tail, and then beginning to growl and snarl, twitching its ears, as another dog appeared on the scene—a long, lank, rough-haired, steely-grey fellow, with a pointed nose, which, with his lean flanks, gave him the aspect of an animal of a vain disposition, who had tried to look like a greyhound, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... The lank and awkward youth rose and began to speak the lines in a high pitched voice that trembled with excitement. It lowered and steadied and rang out like noble music on a well played trumpet as the channel of his spirit filled with the mighty current of the orator's passion. Then, indeed, ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... giving her the blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray. Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian, wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... are well. Orvil or Lank will write to you in a day or two and tell you how business matters stand. Write to me ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant

... He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so as to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, or not to gratify them. It is more righteous in a man that he should "eat strange food," and that his cheek should "so much as lank not," than that he should starve if the strange food be at his command. His past selves are living in him at this moment with the accumulated life of centuries. "Do this, this, this, which we too have done, and found our profit in it," cry the souls of his forefathers within ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... much less to be considered than his! When I've done half the good to people that he has, it will be time enough to begin attacking their beliefs. Meanwhile—meanwhile I can't touch his. ..." Draper leaned forward, stretching his lank arms along his knees. His face was as clear as a spring sky. "I won't touch them, Millner—Go and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... us. For one morning before sunrise, as I stood scouring the milk-pans by the flare of a tallow-dip, came to me a yawning sergeant of this same regiment to tell me that, as my foster father was to be shot at sunrise, therefore, he desired to see me. And I remember how he yawned and yawned, this lank and bony sergeant, showing within his ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... time into the room where the Chamberlain was lying. The doctor, a lank, pock-pitted embodiment of mad chirurgy from books and antique herbal delusions inherited from generations of simple healers, mixed noxious stuff in a gallipot and plumed himself upon some ounces of gore ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees. On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries. Mr. Knox's Ornithological Rambles, from which I have already quoted freely, has this passage: "The herons at Parham assemble ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... most remarkable manner, and taking special notice of her light-brown glossy hair, which seemed to fill them with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened to be coarse ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... Chapman; seen the Proof-sheets lying on his table; taken order that the reprint shall be well corrected,—indeed, I am to read every sheet myself, and in that way get acquainted with it, before it go into stereotype. Chapman is a tall, lank youth of five-and-twenty; full of good will, but of what other equipment time must yet try. By a little Book of his, which I looked at some months ago, he seemed to me sunk very deep in the dust-hole of extinct Socinianism; ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... twenty-eight years, and perpetuity is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then. She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact, compressed, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... but there he was, having come into the house at the door, with a bundle in his hand, and a portmanty on his shoulder, like a traveller out of some vehicle of conveyance. Mrs Drammer, the landlady, did not like his looks; for he had toozy black whiskers, was lank and wan, and moreover deformed beyond human nature, as she said, with a parrot nose, and had no cravat, but only a bit black riband drawn through two button- holes, fastening his ill-coloured sark neck, which gave him altogether something ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... fruits in his spelling-book and dictionary, and possessed a strange sweetness of fancy and mystery beyond their woodland savor. In a few months, too, the garden would be grown and there would be corn and beans and potatoes. Then Jerome's lank outlines would begin to take on curves and the hungry look would disappear from his face. He was a handsome boy, with a fearless outlook of black eyes from his lean, delicate face, and a thick curling crop of fair hair which the sun had bleached like straw. Always protected from the weather, Jerome's ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... frenzied passion, He is lean and lank and crusty; Naught he cares for dress or fashion And his ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... the great hole, and to gaze down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out from them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly to and fro in empty space—I could see but little of these things, for the spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... the Melanesian race, which is a collective name for the dark-skinned, curly-haired, bearded inhabitants of the Pacific. The Melanesians are quite distinct from the Australians, and still more so from the lank-haired, light-skinned Polynesians of the eastern islands. Probably a mixture of Polynesians and Melanesians are the Micronesians, who are light-skinned but curly-haired, and of whom we find representatives in the New Hebrides. The island-nature of the archipelago ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... plump, short man having lank black hair and a smile of sly contentment perpetually adorning his round face, rose hurriedly from the chair upon which he had been seated. Another man who was in the room rose also, as if galvanized by the glare of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... the chest deep-breathed and wide, The low brow clustered with its locks of black, The flow of talk, the ready laugh, give back, The woes blabbed o'er our wine, when Cinara chose To teaze me, cruel flirt—ah, happy woes! Through a small hole a field-mouse, lank and thin, Had squeezed his way into a barley bin, And, having fed to fatness on the grain, Tried to get out, but tried and squeezed in vain. "Friend," cried a weasel, loitering thereabout, "Lean you went in, and lean you must get out." Now, at my head if ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... did you ever see a full-bludded Demmercratic delegait from a country village? Well, jist immagin a tall, leen, lank indyvidooal, with long hare, slouch hat, a knoes wot looked like it'd been in collishun with a elderberrie pie, and a sute of cloes wot was bort wen old Father Adam's wardrope of fig leeves was sold out by the Sherruf of Eden county. That is a kyrect pickter ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... that are narrow chested or lank and lean, can never learn to float, though once you know how, it is easier and far more comfortable than "falling ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... what he saw was a lank, grey beggarman; half his sword bared behind his haunch, his two shoes full of cold road-a-wayish water sousing about him, the tips of his two ears out through his old hat, his two shoulders out through his scant tattered cloak, and in his hand a ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... Toby Crooke, the lank sexton, now fifty or upwards, had passed an hour or two with some village cronies, over a solemn pot of purl, in the kitchen of that cosy hostelry, the night before. He generally turned in there at about seven o'clock, and heard the news. ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... fearing some violence, made another effort to induce Tecumseh to lay aside his arms. This he again refused, saying, in reply, that his tomahawk was also his pipe, and that he might wish to use it in that capacity before their business was closed. At this moment, a tall, lank-sided Pennsylvanian, who was standing among the spectators, and who, perhaps, had no love for the shining tomahawk of the self-willed chief, cautiously approached, and handed him an old, long stemmed, dirty looking earthen pipe, intimating, that if Tecumseh would deliver up the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... minute, Theron!" she called again; and in obedience to the summons the tall lank figure of her husband appeared in the open doorway behind her. A long loose, open dressing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow, clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning undress expression of youthful good-nature. He ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... before knowing whether this threat of a fight would really swell to an outbreak. The boys had just come from afternoon school session; they were still carrying their portfolios under their arms. They may have been of equal age, but one was a head taller than the other. This bigger one, a tall, lank, overgrown schoolboy, with an unpleasant look in his freckled face, was blocking the way of the other, who was short and plump and had an honest face with chubby, red cheeks. The-bigger boy seemed to ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch

... the last delectable bite from my pansy bed and was sticking out a greedy tongue to lap in the snapdragons. Throwing on my bathrobe, I grabbed the broom and attacked the invader. I whacked it fore and aft! I played a tune on its lank ribs! Taken completely by surprise, it hightailed clumsily up through the pines, with me and my trusty broom lending encouragement. When morning came, showing the havoc wrought on my despoiled posies, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... Parasite of Phaeaedromus, who gave his name to the piece, says (ii. 3):—"I am quite undone. I can hardly see; my mouth is bitter; my teeth are blunted; my jaws are clammy through fasting; with my entrails thus lank with abstinence from food, am I come... Let's cram down something first; the gammon, the udder, and the kernels; these are the foundations for the stomach, with head and roast-beef, a good-sized cup and a capacious pot, that council enough ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere

... he, pointing one lank fore-finger at me, "Ramsay, draw your neck out of that collar; for the vanities of the wicked are a yoke ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... was thrust forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of a Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to Guion now, he spoke without lifting ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economize them, and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing. The ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... arms, the frenzied eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl, bursting from the throng, came and threw herself down before me, and buried ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... pencils attracted nobody. I imitated Punch and his bells, and now I have two hundred depots in Paris. I dine at the best cafes, drink the best wine, live on the best of everything, while my defamers get poor and lank, as they deserve to be. Who are my defamers? Envious swindlers! Men who try to ape me, but are too stupid and too dishonest to succeed. They endeavor to attract notice as mountebanks, and then foist upon the public worthless trash, and hope thus to succeed. Ah! defamers of mine, you ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... tones of her voice, her habits, her manias, her fits of anger, the wrinkles on her face, the movements of her thin fingers, and all her well-known attitudes, which she would never have again, and clutching hold of the doctor, he began to moan and weep. His lank legs began to tremble, his whole, stout body was shaken by his sobs, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host's particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal more noisy than that at Doubleday's. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... near at hand, replied, and then a third, in the remote distance, took up the strain. Presently there was a universal blaring, far and near, throughout the camp, whereon Gaude, the bugler of the company, took up his instrument. He was a tall, lank, beardless, melancholy youth, chary of his words, saving his breath for his calls, which he gave conscientiously, with the vigor ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... the frosty morning air, wielded by the powerful arm of some hardy chopper. Looking along shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to shoot at anything in the water they cannot understand, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... of middle height, with a complexion that denoted his Saxon origin. Very thin brows, retrousse nose, and a light gray eye in which might be traced an expression half simple, half cunning, completed the picture of this personage, whose lank body was encased in an old American uniform of faded blue, so scanty in its proportions that the wrists of the wearer wholly exposed themselves beneath the short, narrow sleeves, while the skirts only "shadowed not concealed," that part of the body they had been originally ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... world And make of God a tame confederate, 160 Purveyor to their appetites—you know! But still Natalia said they were your friends, And they assented though they smiled the more, And all came round me—that thin Englishman With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest; 165 He held a paper—"What we want," said he, Ending some explanation to his friends, "Is something slow, involved, and mystical, To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste And lure him on until, at innermost 170 Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find—this! ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... woe! had seen the mobled queen Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flame With bisson rheum; a clout about that head, Where late the diadem stood; and, for a rob About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, A blanket in th' alarm of fear caught up. Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd 'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd; But if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... in every way a marked contrast to the "chief." He was a tall thin sallow-complexioned man, with straight black hair, thick eyebrows, and thin feeble-looking whiskers, the latter very lank and ragged, as he seemed never to trim them. His eyes were believed to be black, but no one seemed to be at all certain about this, as he would never look any man long enough in the face to allow the question to be decided. His glances were of a shifting ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... the middle of the freight-car, looking down in wonder at the fugitives, was a tall vagabond of the most picturesque type. No ragamuffin was ever so tattered and torn as this rakish individual. His clothes barely hung together on his lank frame; he was barefoot and hatless; a great mop of black hair topped his shrewd, rugged face; coal-black eyes snapped and twinkled beneath shaggy brows and a delighted, knowing grin spread slowly over his rather boyish countenance. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... attracted by the high carts, on two solid wheels, and drawn by four or six oxen, hauling the cut cane. But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of a hands-breadth of shade by general stores. "I could burst into tears," Savina ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... under and out of his depth by Link's exertions. Now, coming to the surface, he swam to shore and trotted up the bank to the road. Absurdly lank and small, with his soaking coat plastered close to his slim body, he stood over ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... Cecil rode back the pony which John had taken up. The alacrity with which the long lank bending figure stepped to meet him was something unwonted, but the boy himself ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had all the basement cleaned except the one cow-stall that was filled to the ceiling with litter; and Winnie had washed the windows. Then John Jones's lank figure darkened the doorway, and he cried, "Hello, neighbor, what ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... thee, ancyent Marinere! "I fear thy skinny hand; "And thou art long and lank and brown "As ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... wheel-horse. He had never had any hope of being chief of staff. Hawk-eyed, with a great beak nose and iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a sense of humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony hands gripping a broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain armor. He had a mastiff's devotion to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... hour, as if considering how he is off for soap,—would you believe it,—has just returned from abroad, and has long been justly celebrated for his conversational talents in all the coteries and courts of Europe. If that lank-and-leather-jawed gentleman, with complexion bespeaking a temperament dry and adust, and who has long been sedulously occupied in feeling the edge of his fruit-knife with the ball of his thumb—do not commit suicide before September,—Lavater must have been as great ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... o'clock C—-n rises, and at eight, a marine sentinel, transformed into a lady's page, whom we are taking to Mexico as porter, brings us some very delicious chocolate. He is followed by the Captain's familiar, an unhappy-looking individual, pale, lank, and lean, with the physiognomy of a methodist parson, and in general appearance like a weed that has grown up in one night. He tremblingly, and with most rueful countenance, carries a small plate of sugar-biscuits. These ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... all their youth are circumcised at six or seven years old, any one performing the operation. The natives are not all of one colour; some being quite black with crisp or curled hair like negroes; others not quite so black with lank hair; others again resembling mulatoes; while some that live in the interior are almost white, yet have hair of both kinds. They are of large stature, strong and well made, of clear judgment, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... behind the ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and coiling himself up all his wiry length—now no longer lank, but swollen and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake—he falls suddenly asleep, and re-banquets in a dream ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson



Words linked to "Lank" :   spindly, thin, lean



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