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Leer   Listen
noun
Leer  n.  An oven in which glassware is annealed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books



... ready soldier," observed Pitts. "I saw him once in Philadelphia, before his Legion went south. He had a most determined look in spite of the good-humoured leer of his eye. He was one of the last men I should have wished to provoke; he was a complete Irishman—blunders and all. I heard of his telling a black servant who was walking barefoot on the snow to put on a pair of stockings the next time ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... electioneering, a subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... to-night: my old friend cried "pish," and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... the cunningest kind. Responding under the same mask adopted by this knavish elder, I said, "The chief of Kingaru has called me a rich sultan. If I am a rich sultan why comes not the chief with a rich present to me, that he might get a rich return?" Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, there is no matama in the village." To which I replied that since there was no matama in the village I would pay him half a shukka, or a yard of cloth, which would be exactly equivalent to his present; that ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... walking under a hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or stone is to the vast and wide field that here I see. This ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... Leslie was sober, but unfortunately for himself barely so, for the delegates had been treated with lavish Western hospitality, and there had been many toasts to honor during the dinner. He leaned against the wall with one hand on a carved bracket, looking down upon her with what seemed to be a leer of brutal pride ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... capacity for deep draughts and long; the fair American spills her coffee and looks an exclamation; the Bishop pays for his daughter's tea, drops the change in the one chink which the buffet boards disclose, and thinks one; the travelled person, disdaining haste, smiles on all with a pitying leer; the foolish man, who has forgotten something, makes public his conviction that he will lose his train. The adamantine official alone is at his ease, and, as the minutes go, the knell of the train-loser sounds the deeper, the horrid ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... messenger minute instructions and a liberal gratuity, Carter dismissed him and the despatches from his thoughts. Later in the day he was to be reminded not only of them but of the evil leer bestowed by Johann at the munificent tip dropped into his ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... grow in one night like mushrooms,' he said with a leer. (There was no mistake about his voice—it was Ombos; the words rang through my brain as if they had been shouted.) 'You can't expect a statue to turn into a god in a breath, or to come down and skip about ... it takes ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... bloated fiend tell him what he wanted to know? Brokaw stared at him stupidly, and then all at once he started, as if some one had pricked him into consciousness, and a slow grin began to spread over his face. It was a reminiscent, horrible sort of leer, not a smile—the expression of a man who gloats over ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... unaccountable. It at first exhibited itself in restlessness, and an inability to remain quiet, and afterwards in half-suppressed groans and sighs. If he opened his eyes and looked at the reader, he saw a devilish figure, with a malignant leer glaring at him; if he shut them to exclude the disagreeable image it was converted into a thousand smaller figures, dancing up and down like motes in a distempered vision, all wearing that intolerable grin, while the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... But they parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, That ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... Pistol! Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's 40 wife: I spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is, 'I am Sir ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... rule, he bowed; and gave the company to understand he took this as a polite acknowledgment of respect. But his gesture was accompanied with a disconcerted leer of smothered malice, which I could not misinterpret. It was sardonic; and, to me, who knew what was passing in his heart, disgusting, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... said she, with a cunning leer; "but this I know, that they had a love scene together this very morning, and that he kissed her very sweetly near ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Father Time deputes me here before ye, Not for to preach, but tell his simple story: The sage, grave Ancient cough'd, and bade me say, "You're one year older this important day," If wiser too—he hinted some suggestion, But 'twould be rude, you know, to ask the question; And with a would-be roguish leer and wink, Said—"Sutherland, in one word, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... his haunches. Margaret shuddered, for the uneven surface of the sack moved strangely. He opened the mouth of it. The woman in the corner listlessly droned away on the drum, and occasionally uttered a barbaric cry. With a leer and a flash of his bright teeth, the Arab thrust his hand into the sack and rummaged as a man would rummage in a sack of corn. He drew out a long, writhing snake. He placed it on the ground and ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... that for two days and nights the hound shall leer and snarl before the face of Mung-days and nights that shall be lit by neither sun nor moons, for these shall go dipping down the sky with all the Worlds as the galleons glide away, because the gods that made them are gods ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... Hypocrisy, with holy leer; Soft smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown: The assassinating wife, the household fiend, And far the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... to my friends," she faltered. "They will be anxious." But the fellow laughed with a sinister leer. "No—ah, no, the lovely senorita will come with me," he replied; but there was the temper of steel in his words. For Snake le Vasquez, on the border, where human life was lightly held, was known as the Slimy Viper. Of all the evil men in that inferno, Snake ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... been sitting just within the door, rose and came to his chief's side. Jose felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped outside and took his arm. The Alcalde's unlovely face expanded in a sinister leer. "It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if he becomes ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of about thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... soul in patience, until the day came when I received a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, "Compliments of J.P." I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody—think of chiropody treated with a leer!—I came upon a column and a half in which myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines, and was more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sinner," he said, "like Jonah warned the sinners in Nineveh. I'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell in the Garden of Eden." Then the leer came back into his face. "Ever hear of the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... now the oblique leer, or the Janus: he satisfies all with that aspect most nobly. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... until his back was nearly horizontal, and his green-stockinged legs striking out behind him with the furious rapidity of a great frog trying to push his head into the mud, he turned back his little face with a leer of triumphant derision at every moving thing which might happen to be ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... little piece of information, and with his leer an inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was. I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made his home for ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... was able to distinguish the pattern of the wall-paper, and as she followed its design human life seemed black and intolerably loathsome. She strove against the thought, but she saw the creature leer so plainly that there was no way of escaping from the conviction that what she had accepted as life was but a mask worn by a leper. The vision persisted for what seemed a long while, and when it faded it was pictures of her own life that she read upon the wall; her soul cried out against ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... menaced house—I know not how she fared—whether she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of madness whether it is divine or whether ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... Somehow, he seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the other his straw hat. George Ray, more observant ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go yourself, ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... that froze me with apprehension was that of Dejah Thoris and Sola standing there before him, and the fiendish leer of him as he let his great protruding eyes gloat upon the lines of her beautiful figure. She was speaking, but I could not hear what she said, nor could I make out the low grumbling of his reply. She stood there erect before him, her head high held, and even at the distance ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... nothing. Would ye believe me now, that before the Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could shoot? Ay, could I!" cries he, and then with a leer: "If ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you," insisted Anthony with a leer. "Firs' place, my wife wants nothin' whatever do with you. Never did. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue to the ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... seen the two people sitting over there?" and he twisted eyebrows and mouth awry, with a whimsical leer of caution. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... First favoured the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... young gentleman about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... watched them until they passed the turn beyond the bridge. Mr Blumenthal watched them too, from behind the curtains in his room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air, he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... an old woman, wrapped in a heavy mantle, standing beside him. Sir Ulric thought he had never seen so hideous a hag as she who now stood gazing at him. She was wrinkled and toothless, and bent with age. One eye was shut, and in the other was a leer so horrible that he feared her some uncanny creature of the wood, and crossed himself ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... snicker from behind him. He, thinking it was one of his late tormentors, paid no attention to it. Then a cynical, biting laugh stung him. He wheeled, to see Shorty leaning against a tree, a sneering leer on his flushed face. Shorty's right hand was suspended above his holster, hooked to his belt by the thumb—a favorite position of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... one of the sailors chanced to set his eyes upon me; and, after regarding me with a comic leer, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... favored him with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call to deny it, for ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... house made to look like morning. Some of the guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs. One or two went to the door, and gazed along the street more than once. Tinker Taylor was the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer on ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... girl, glancing into my face with a knowing leer, that produced an instant sense of humiliation; and away she went ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... any will wish to interrupt you," returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; "but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner's friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman goes ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I had seen in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the Knight; "Of him I have heard much good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" Then answered the gentle Knight With ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... Lydia's eyes. I'm sorry, I'd have liked to have seen him end his days happily among the hens, a-treading of them. Joseph felt he had not rightly understood her, and when he inquired out her meaning from her, she told it with so repulsive a leer that he could not conquer a sudden dislike. He moved away from her immediately and asked her no ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... can Envy's leer appal, Or staring Folly's vain applauses soothe? Can jealous Fear Truth's dauntless heart enthrall? Suspicion lurks not in the heart ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Wolves too sure there are Of every sort, and every character. Some of them mild and gentle-humour'd be, Of noise and gall, and rancour wholly free; Who tame, familiar, full of complaisance Ogle and leer, languish, cajole and glance; With luring tongues, and language wond'rous sweet, Follow young ladies as they walk the street, Ev'n to their very houses, nay, bedside, And, artful, tho' their true designs they hide; Yet ah! these simpering ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... Davis, with a knowing leer, "he's not the man to marry a nice gal like that 'un he's got up to the Rest. Better let her be for some lucky young feller as could make her happy. Don't you say ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... friends go?" continued the spokesman with a leer that caused the two boys to shrink ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... A cunning leer passed over the greyish countenance as the dazzling vision protruded itself before Mr. Sharpley. He drew his fingers convulsively through the mass of bristling hair (which might be designated by that color known as iron grey), and then suppressing a yawn, muttered: "It's worth ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... his eyes from the cup into which he had been gazing, absorbed as gazes a seer into his crystal, he caught on the Seneschal's lips so odious a smile, in the man's eyes so greedy, hateful a leer as he bent them on the Marquise, that he had much ado not to alter the expression of that flabby face by hurling at it ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... into a sneering laugh. "Oh, is that so?" he demanded. "Fine! I'd like t' see Perkins, all right!" His great shoulders shook, and a horrible leer distorted his hairy face. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... upon me as you have upon Captain Farnsworth," he said, with an insulting leer and in a tone of prurient innuendo. "I am not susceptible, my dear." This more for Farnsworth's benefit than to insult her, albeit he was not ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... wat er is. Mijn hoop is Christus en zyn bloed. Door deze leer ik en hoop door die het eenwig goed. Ons leven is maar eenen dag, vol ziekten en vol naar geklag. Vol rampen dampen (!) en vendriet. Een schim ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the wink, drew back, and cried, Avaunt! my name's Religion! And then she turn'd to the preacher And leer'd like a love-sick pigeon. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the caress, and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... to his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited wit—his only ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... full around and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the arm ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... and bid her go on. The Gypsie told him that he was a Batchelour, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to some Body than he thought: The Knight still repeated, She was an idle Baggage, and bid her go on. Ah Master, says the Gypsie, that roguish Leer of yours makes a pretty Woman's Heart ake; you ha'n't that Simper about the Mouth for Nothing—The uncouth Gibberish with which all this was uttered like the Darkness of an Oracle, made us the more attentive to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... want it—for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... he had done much to blot out all that had gone before. And yet sometimes the memory of that past unhappiness, of its disagreements and quarrels and petty unkindnesses would raise its ugly head and look at her with a sort of leer as if ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... echoes, with a smile, in comparison of which our host's satyr-leer seems pleasant and chaste. "Old friends! you call yourself a woman of the world" (indeed I call myself nothing of the kind), "you call yourself a woman of the world, and believe that! They looked like old friends at dinner to-day, did not ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... was as useless for the local pilot to look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... the man who lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success I saw him put a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded toward him, extending the hand of congratulation. "Mr. Hilbrun," said he, "I am Judge Burrage—the Honorable T. Coleman Burrage—and I will say ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... Hemstead added, "That man there is more than fast. I should imagine that Harcourt was a little fast, and yet he has good and noble traits. I could trust him. But treachery is stamped upon that fellow's face, and the leer of a devil gleams from his eye. He is not only fast, he is bad. Does Miss ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... my Uncle John, who was dancing attendance on her with the leer of a satyr, "please do not let me disturb this lady. I am so troubled about the anxiety I must be causing my father and my friends at the present moment, that I could not really stop here. All I ask is that she will ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... de mandos en Puerto Rico. Discurso escrito y comenzado a leer ante la Comision del Congreso de ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... den liebe vollen becher, Und trinkt ihn froelich leer; In ganz Europa, ihr herren recher, Ist solch ein ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall have a new silk dress from me, if you keep your wits ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... with an insolent leer; "and his she will be who casts highest. If two, or ten, or twenty of us should cast the same, we have an equal ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... me, Savile. Just tell me one thing," Jasmyn said, with an inquisitive leer. "Is she dark ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... with suitable inscription, or twelve lines of verse, for L4, 17s. 6d.,' I took up his packet of In Memoriam cards and went through them. The first one was a hand-drawn design in cream and gold—Kate's fancy. It represented in the centre an enormously bloated infant with an idiotic leer, lying upon its back on a blue cloud with scalloped edges, whilst two male angels, each with an extremely vicious expression, were pulling the cloud along by means of tow-lines attached to their wings. Underneath were these words in MS.: 'More angels can be added, if desired, at an ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... departing with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... side he stood motionless for just an instant glaring into my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to almost unnerve me—then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was Jubal's day to learn new methods of warfare. For the first time he had seen a bow and arrows, never before that duel had ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... snout like a hog's, three monstrous blue eyes, and a mouth full of tusks, was glad that the brave soldier could no longer fight the onis. He would approach the sick man in his chamber, leer horribly at him, loll out his tongue, and pull down the lids of his eyes with his hairy fingers, until the sight sickened Raiko more ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... in Swedish Punch. "So, Herr Ober-Inspector, endlich sind wir glucklich herunter gekommen. Jetz konnen Sie nach Hause immer aug gleichem Fusse gehen. Naturlich! Jedermann weisst wie abscheulich kraftig Schwedischer Punsch ist. Die Strasse ist ganz leer. Gluckliche ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'—in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the high road to bein' worth some punkins, ef a feller has sense ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... stationed herself in the entrance where she had a view of both men, saw the cruel leer that accompanied Walcott's words and understood their significance as her father did not. Her hand sought the bosom of her dress for an instant, then dropped quietly at her side, but swift as the movement ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, into the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But this ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... in the house, and this morning as I was standing at the window I saw him go out. He glanced up and caught my eye. It was a loutish figure and a singularly repulsive face that I saw, and he gave me the benefit of a very unpleasant leer. At least, so ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... any mistake, my son. Your poor old father isn't quite a fool, though he is only an honest broken merchant." He looked up sideways at his son with a wink and a most unpleasant leer. "Where there's money I can smell it. There's money there, and heaps of it. It's my belief that he is the richest man in the world, though how he came to be so I should not like to guarantee. I'm not quite blind yet, Robert. Have you seen the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... his feet in their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments, he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... Success ne'er lit yet on thy feeble brow, But ever mock'd thee with dissembling leer, Whilst at thy feet graves open, at thy heart Remorse points daggers, and thou walk'st the world, Blood on thine hand and fever in thine eye, Friendless, by that thou lovest ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger at ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... her to the soul, Nor could she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... see the little doctor explainin' somethin' to Jabez. I thought he had gone long ago, but the hooked-nosed buzzard couldn't leave without satisfyin' his curiosity. "What do you reckon was the reason your friend wouldn't let himself be examined?" sez he, with a leer. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... marched along, looking right and left at the pretty faces—and there were plenty of them, too—that a momentary curiosity drew to the windows; but although we smiled and ogled and leered as only a newly arrived regiment can smile, ogle, or leer, by all that's provoking we might as well have wasted our blandishments upon the Presbyterian meeting-house, that frowned upon us with its high-pitched roof and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... is better than a roue of twenty. It is better not to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go through a girl's mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted; whose eyes, as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance, and are taught to leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow blind before a commoner. I don't know much about fashionable life. Heaven help us (you young Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!) Why, sir, it absolutely appears to me as if this little hop-o'-my-thumb of a creature ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... here, Thou haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly house I ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... Miriam, contemplating Hilda's work with great interest and delight, mixed with the painful sympathy that the picture excited. "Everywhere we see oil-paintings, crayon sketches, cameos, engravings, lithographs, pretending to be Beatrice, and representing the poor girl with blubbered eyes, a leer of coquetry, a merry look as if she were dancing, a piteous look as if she were beaten, and twenty other modes of fantastic mistake. But here is Guido's very Beatrice; she that slept in the dungeon, and awoke, betimes, to ascend the scaffold, And now that you have done it, Hilda, can you ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... come here, ye maiden vile, And rob me of my mate?' And on her child the mother scowled 80 A deadly leer of hate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... us eat, if you want to," said Josh Owen, with a malicious leer, as he spread a piece of paper on the ground and began to lay out the meal. "When are you two going to eat? I don't know. Maybe not for a few days yet. Ye see, it ain't so easy to make an enemy of a man by sneaky tricks, and then get on ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... danger there than here, Alessandro," said Ramona, bursting into violent weeping as she recalled the insolent leer with which the man Jake had looked at her. "Oh! ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... carefree boys of sixteen and eighteen, passed the drinks with many a jest and often a wink, but never a drop drank they, not until the Lodge had closed its doors on all visitors, and then Tom, the elder, with a final leer at Sandy the younger, drained off a glass of bad whisky with a grace ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... stained and splashed. She had fine dark eyes, and was young, bold-looking, and handsome; but when she came nearer, the moist pallor of her skin, the slackness of her lower lip and jaw, and an eager and worn expression in her fine eyes, gave her a thirsty, reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as her voice had done before, but more definitely; for it struck Marian, with a shock, that Conolly, in the grotesque metamorphosis of a nightmare, might ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... listened attentively, and Hawden looked at me with such a leer of triumph that my fingers tingled to smack his cars. Turning to my grandmother, I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... come with horns and tail, With diabolic grin and crafty leer; I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail To waken in my heart a ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... two occasions)—"no baron or squire or knight of the shire," &c. Truly on this occasion the holy father had not been unmindful of himself; and, considering the early hour and dreary state of the weather; was as jovial as the heart could desire. A peculiar leer and frequent ebullitions of laughter, from mysterious causes, showed the frame of mind he was in. After coffee, and a glass of aniseed brandy, we viewed his priestly robes, which were of cloth of gold and very handsome. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with nothing amiss in it (Piers Plowman). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... thick lips drew back in an ugly leer, and he gave a savage curse. Nanette flinched as if ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... character; this is the key-note of his art. How finely he expresses envy, jealousy, hatred, covetousness, and the vampire that sometimes lurks in the soul of woman. An etching, Hypocrisy, with its faint leer on the lips of a woman, is a little masterpiece. His sick people are pitiful, that is, when they are not grotesque; the entire tragedy of blasted childhood is in his ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... constable spoke, Buzzard's eye, with a leer, lighted on the cask in the corner. He bethought him that it had a vent-hole even though the landlord had removed the spigot. He tiptoed unsteadily across the room, and proceeded with much difficulty to insert a straw in the small opening. He had thus already added materially to his maudlin condition, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... reasons: because of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New France, the appendage of an Old World ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. Satires: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... beauty of a beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer of life." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... seat by the lamp, and took up her novel; but her eyes did not see the printed page. Suddenly she threw the book down on the table. It was impossible to read; Sam's talk had disturbed her to the point of sharp discomfort. What did old Mr. Wright mean by "knowing cakes and ale"? And his leer yesterday had been an offence! Why had he looked at her like that? Did he—? Was it possible—! She wished she had spoken to Lloyd about it. But no; it couldn't be; it was only his queer way; he was half crazy, she believed. And it would do no good to speak to Lloyd. The ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... was a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent Club," where he is a great source ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... can hardly take leave of the group that accompanies them. In the meantime, the coachman has a world of small commissions to execute. Sometimes he delivers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or newspaper to the door of a public-house; and sometimes, with knowing leer and words of sly import, hands to some half-blushing, half-laughing housemaid an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the village, every one runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces, and blooming giggling ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... "By the bye, where have all your owls departed to? Are they like the ducks, merely come, pause, and proceed on their migratory way? Or perhaps"—with a leer—"they only stand on sentry in the valley when—when you require ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... office, he found the elder absent. An evil leer on his face, he swaggered up and down the street, his hands ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... reception-room a mob was struggling at a window, beneath a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue, his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was spouting out of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... passed on and found myself in the vicinity of Old Mortality and Monkbarns, who were deeply engaged in some antiquarian debate—too much so to notice the shrewd smile and cunning leer which the old Bluegown, Edie Ochiltree, now ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state you've ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... regarded us with indifference. He was cast for an old and withered Mephistopheles, his lines all downward, his few teeth fangs, and his smile a threatening leer, as if he thought of a joke he could not tell to decent visitors, but which almost choked him to withhold. His clothes were rags, and his naked feet like the flippers of seals. He opened his mouth, yawned, and said, "Iiii," a word which means, "I slept ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... Mittelgart[3] brennt, Kein Stein mehr steht. Fhrt Straftag ins Land, Fhrt mit Feuer, die Frevler zu richten: 50 Da kann kein Verwandter vor dem Weltbrand[4] helfen. Wenn der Erdflur Breite ganz nun verbrennt, Und Feuer und Luft ganz leer gefegt sind, Wo ist die Mark, wo der Mann stritt mit den Magen? Die Sttte ist verbrannt, die Seele steht bedrngt, 55 Nicht weiss sie, wie bssen: so wandert sie ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas



Words linked to "Leer" :   leery, contempt, scorn, facial expression, look, expression



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