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Obstreperous   Listen
adjective
Obstreperous  adj.  
1.
Attended by, or making, a loud and tumultuous noise; clamorous; noisy; vociferous. "The obstreperous city." "Obstreperous approbation." "Beating the air with their obstreperous beaks."
2.
Resistant to control; unruly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obstreperous" Quotes from Famous Books



... of returning pleasurers, some of whom were happy beyond the sober wont of the fatherland. The conductor took a special interest in his tipsy passengers, trying to keep them in order, and genially entreating them to be quiet when they were too obstreperous. From time to time he got some of them off, and then, when he remounted the car, he appealed to the remaining passengers for their sympathy with an innocent smile, which the Americans, still strange to the unjoyous physiognomy of the German ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... who was always "keeping up county influence," was very shocked at the obstreperous conduct of Liberal Snake. Indeed he had viewed the arrival of this worthy with no smiling countenance, but what could he say, as he came in the suit of Lord Pert, who was writing, with the lecturer's assistance, a little pamphlet ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... the grand provost was in good humor, they made the most obstreperous fly as if he were flinging the ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... is never noisy, obstreperous or excited. In fact, I never hardly noticed him in a fight, unless I happened to want him, or he had something to report, when he was always in the right place, and his information ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... little warm bodies they had, and what delicate, refined faces! They had not seemed like Ellen's blowsy, obstreperous youngsters, practical and grasping to the last extreme after the model of their father. They had starry eyes and hair like tangled sunbeams. Their laughter rippled like brooks in summer, and their hands were like bands that bound the heart. Cookies and stories ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... these only are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy—if she deals with them in the best manner—must maintain one ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... laid them down on the backs of their seats rowed in their plaids, and the lasses looked down to the ground and laughed till their faces grew red. I despised to stick the tune, and therefore was obliged to carry on in spite of the obstreperous accompaniment; but I was, time after time, so completely put out of all countenance with the brute, that I was obliged to give up my office in disgust, and leave the parish once more to their old friend, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his own implied personality. He ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... in the kitchen, and pushing the landlord about, crying at the same time that they would stand by Sir Watkin to the last, and would never see him plundered. One of them, a fellow of about thirty, in a hairy cap, black coat, dirty yellow breeches, and dirty white top-boots, who was the most obstreperous of them all, at last came up to the old chap who disliked South Welshmen and tried to knock off his hat, swearing that he would stand by Sir Watkin; he, however, met a Tartar. The enemy of the South Welsh, like all crusty people, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... galloped down the rocky gorge at a pace that threatened a sudden and total smash to horse and man. Had any of his old comrades or friends witnessed that burst, they would certainly have said that March Marston was mad—madder, perhaps, than the most obstreperous March hare that ever marched madly through the wild regions ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... grew, the louder they talked, reviling the Committee collectively and singly, bragging that they would shoot at sight Coleman, Truett, Durkee, and several others whom they named. They flourished weapons publicly, and otherwise became obstreperous. The Committee decided that their influence was bad and instructed Sterling Hopkins, with four others, to arrest the lot and ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... cuffed about by a parcel of 'Bourbon gendarmerie'—Liberty!—why hell sweat"—here I—slipped out at the side door into the water-melon patch. As I receded, I heard the whole party burst out into an obstreperous fit of laughter.—A few broken sentences, from the Kentuckian and the radical, reached my ear, such as "backed out"—"damned aristocratic." I returned in about half an hour to pay my bill, when I could observe one or two of those doughty politicians who remained, leering at me most significantly. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... deferred taking any action while his right-hand man was absent; but the uproar became at last so obstreperous that he walked to the cable-covered hatchway and struck heavily upon ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... situations—proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their voices and their skill in every kind of music—heroic or noisy, pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's time on an exhaustive analysis. We shall have ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... in the middle of the performance of "Auld Lang Syne," a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there was an immense amount of standing with one foot on the table, knocking mugs together and shaking hands, without which accompaniments it seems impossible for the youths of Britain to take part in that famous ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... not be allowed to pass by my people without a tremendous quarrel. Our blacks seemed to be in a peculiarly excitable state. Ali, especially, who has distinguished himself for several days in the obstreperous line, has had a regular turn-to with his father-in-law; and not satisfied with this, nearly strangled Moknee's son. The Mandara black threw himself on the ground and called out,—"Load my pistol, O Chaouch; I must ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... table, at a great supper, after a masquerade. About me were my friends, richly costumed, on all sides young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and joy; on the right and on the left exquisite dishes, flagons, splendor, flowers; above my head was an obstreperous orchestra, and before me my ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... hat had slipped back, and the kinks and curls of my obstreperous hair were something awful. I know I looked very disreputable and also, no doubt, very guilty and conscience-stricken. Aunt gave me an unutterable look and then followed me up to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... urged, ought to be content to take both the Law and the Commandments from his betters, since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As for the noisy, insolent operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing towns, was there not for them the strong hand of authority, and, if they grew too obstreperous, the uplifted sabre of the military as at Peterloo? It was all very well, however, to extol the virtues of patience, contentment, and obedience, but the sense of wrong and of defiance rankled in the masses, and with it—in a dull and confused manner—the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... things, imitate Luther, and fling his ink-pot. Even though it light upon the page, let him not be inconsolable, but remember that no blots are so bad as those made by ambitious inflation. We have not that horror of "fine writing" which leads The Saturday Review and Company to such obstreperous exclamation, and can endure the worst that Americans are guilty of in this matter quite as well as that affectation of off-hand ease and nonchalance which enhances the native clumsiness of many among the later English writers, and, to our mind, mars extremely the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... us over the edge of the mist just behind that silver birch; and don't talk so much about women and things you don't understand. What is the use of your bothering about fists and whips and muscles and all the dreadful things invented for the confusion of obstreperous wives? You know you are a civilised husband, and a civilised husband is a creature who has ceased to be ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... lungs to the pitch of extremity, through speaking tubes—the screams of women and children, and the universal combination of discord, announced the termination of the Civic Sovereign's performance in the drama; "the revelry now had began," 343 and all was obstreperous uproar, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... but half an hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... so that when the first civilities are over, they usually talk to one another, and I am left alone in the midst of the company. Though I cannot drink myself, I am obliged to encourage the circulation of the glass; their mirth grows more turbulent and obstreperous; and before their merriment is at an end, I am sick with disgust, and, perhaps, reproached with my sobriety, or by some sly insinuations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... shook her head. "It doesn't obstruct mine," she said. "Have you been reading what the papers are saying about your friend Mr. Blithers and his obstreperous Maud?" ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... willful and unruly, the Captain no doubt will take great pleasure in giving the offender "a good paddling," to use his own forcible expression. This official is a strong advocate of corporal punishment. He claims that a "little loosening up of the hide" of an obstreperous prisoner does the said prisoner a vast amount of good. Among the convicts the deputy warden is austere. He is never seen sauntering about the prison enclosure with his long arms entwined about any of "the boys in stripes." He claims, that ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. Par exemple, madame, par exemple!" And, with a frantic gesture and a roar of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... general going over, re-pin the wings if necessary, and wind down any obstreperous feathers with thread. A number of pins or wires thrust in the middle of back and ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... White-star had become rather obstreperous, showing his spirit; his master carelessly lent down, giving him a box on each ear, just as if the stately blood horse had been a naughty child; then composedly rode him back to ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... through rose-colored spectacles; and disillusioned, discontented, cynical, selfish, and, of course, most horribly bored. He was gun-shy of women; he suspected them of wanting to marry him. He was wary of men; he suspected them of wanting to exploit him. He loathed children, who were generally obstreperous and unnecessary editions of parents he didn't admire. He didn't even trust the beautiful works of men's hands. They, even they, were too often faked! If you had dug up the indubitable mummy of the first Pharaoh from under the oldest of the pyramids, The Author would have turned ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... the swamps and here and there a lofty pine on the mountain sides. All the summer birds had gone already; but a few red-headed woodpeckers were still tapping decayed tree trunks; and numerous jays made the woodland resound to their varied outcries, first shrill and obstreperous, then plaintive. Far up a hillside of poplar, a horde of crows were clamoring over some ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... to express their feelings in that way, unless perhaps occasionally a few do so when they become sentimental with a larger amount of grog on board than usual, but even that is not very common. They are more inclined to become obstreperous and ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... manifested in many ways, all of them silent, rather than obstreperous and obtrusive. It is shown by a certain gracious, ineffable expectation with which for the first time he approaches any human soul, as if unknown and incalculable possibilities were opening here; by a noble ceremonial which he ever observes toward his higher characters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... could be introduced successfully into this circle. Johnny, as he had told us in his suburb, had cut loose from his parents. He was now living on his own, in a neighborhood not far from ours—from his, as it had once been. One evening I ventured to bring him round. He developed an obstreperous baritone—it was the same voice, now more specifically in action, that I had first heard on the devastated prairie; and he made himself rather preponderant, whether he happened to know the song ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... of these times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the purity of our private lives, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the last time we'll land in a town of this size," declared Roy indignantly, as he helped the constables shove back an obstreperous individual who insisted on examining the motor of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... gained the confidence of the North-West partners, his policy began gradually to unfold itself. One obstreperous North-Wester was sent to the Columbia; another to the Montreal department, where "their able services could not be dispensed with;" and thus in the course of a few years he got rid of all those refractory spirits who dared to tell him ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... but by the professed historian, of whom there are not two dozen in all Germany. Among them there has not, to this hour, been found one competent to give an opinion in a few weeks on a book which is the fruit of half a life. On the other hand, there was soon a whole set of fanatical partisans and obstreperous bunglers in a neighboring press, who in eight days had condemned this work, in some instances, by calling it an historical commonplace, and in others, a political pamphlet with 'destructive tendencies.' At the same time, and in a manner easily accounted for, under the influence of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... gift of leadership; she would be the leader here. She rejoiced in the fact that all the girls were staring at her. She would go carefully to work and soon secure a band of followers, who would increase by-and-by, becoming extremely obstreperous and doing all sorts of naughty things, for Holly had no intention when at school to be good or to learn much. She went solely and entirely for her own happiness, because she preferred the girls with the blue, gray, and nondescript eyes to the kitchen cat, Jean, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... claim. In addition to the doubts suggested by the brief time which had elapsed from the date of the policy to the death of the child, there were several other slight circumstances of corroborative suspicion. The chief of these was, that a neighbor had declared he heard the father indulging in obstreperous mirth in a room adjoining that in which the corpse lay only about two hours after his son had expired. This unseemly, scandalous hilarity of her husband, the wife appeared to faintly remonstrate against. The directors had consequently resolved ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... fun, for the play was just the same. The audience enjoyed it greatly. The Indians were more obstreperous, and sang a hideous song. The vocalists sang many popular songs of the day, "Old Dan Tucker," "Lucy Long," "Zip Coon," and several patriotic songs. There was more dancing than in the afternoon, and the boys enjoyed the Juba in song and dance by a "real slave darkey" who had been made so ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... and irrisibility however, are confined to their sober hours. When indulging their insatiate thirst for spirit, they are boisterous and rude, and by their obstreperous laughter, their demoniacal shrieks and turbulent vociferations, produce an appalling discord, such as might well be expected to proceed from a company of infernal spirits at their fiendish revels; and exhibit a striking contrast to the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... she was now only showing to the full, for this time she had verse to deal with and she made it unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty, melody, truth; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. She caught up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining arms and, seeming to tread the air in the flutter of her robe, carried it into the high places of poetry, of art, of style. And she had such tones of nature, such concealments of art, such effusions of life, that the whole scene glowed with the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... but this enormity was too much. Brimfield was peeved! More than that, she was really angry! And, being angry, she forgot that for twenty minutes she had been outplayed and started in then and there to administer a licking to the obstreperous small boy. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the elephant's ears from brown paper). He will that. Pat is the Grand Exalted Chafe Ruler of the Benevolent and Obstreperous Order of United Wooden-men, and he won't be ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... don't get obstreperous! Manda's mom would like to sell the farm and move to Lancaster to a little house. Then she wouldn't ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... breath before attempting to push on farther. When, however, he recognized in the sturdy old man who strode along in the midst of the new company, no more distant acquaintance than the father of Marcia, he was conscious of a strong revulsion. Better the continued buffeting with an obstreperous mob than the embarrassments he foresaw in such a rencontre; but it was too late to avoid it: the interests and perils of the two parties were too nearly identical, and he heard the gruff voice of his old friend ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... evidence is not evidence, but a series of surmises. Saint- Germain, on this theory, 'wrop his buth up in a mistry' (like that of Charles James Fitzjames de la Pluche), out of regard for the character of his royal mamma. I believe this about as much as I believe that a certain Rev. Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous Covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart. However, Saint-Germain is said, like Kaspar Hauser, to have murmured of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on magnificent terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... cat-calls, epithets, men interrupted the orator with cheers for the South. Speaking was like lifting up one's voice in the midst of a hurricane, or trying to speak while a typhoon was raging on the sea. For one hour the tumult raged. From time to time the police would succeed in carrying out some obstreperous individual but there were enough men scattered through the hall, each bellowing like a bull of Bashan, to make hearing impossible. To add to the tumult, from time to time, an Englishman would climb ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... is obstreperous, Doctor. I've been a long spell away from Hetty, and I don't know as I should take on so now. That night I never slept. I lay kickin' and tumblin' all night, and before mornin' I'd resolved to quit Simsbury, and go seek my fortin' beyond seas, hopin' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... length began to subside. The mackaw's screams gave place to a low quivering croak; and the insulted pug's yells yielded to a gentle whine. The aunts' obstreperous joy began to be chastened with fear for the consequences that might follow an abrupt disclosure; and, while Lady Juliana condoled with her favourites, it was concerted between the prudent aunts that the joyful news should be broke to their ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... and in the representation of the most tempestuous crises maintains sure mastery over expression and form. The writer himself may share with his creations their longing for fresh elemental power; but he is endowed with far too much of the traditional culture of his caste ever to allow himself any obstreperous accents. The words of one of his dramatic figures characterize his own art: "We no longer know how to underscore. Underscoring is in bad taste. Those people out there live ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... was always "the next ridge"—until when nearly ten miles from camp we saw a smoke rise ahead of us, but so far away that we could do no good by going on. However, we had gained something by locating a fresh camp, so started homewards, the buck becoming most obstreperous when he saw our change of plan, for he made it clear by signs that the gins (indicating their breasts by covering his own with his hands) and the blind man (pointing to his own closed eyes and making a crooked track in the sand) and the rest, had circled round and gone ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... they see no reason to be dutiful, and their philosophic nihilism, which comes to this, that all things having been proved false except their own desires, their desires become a philosophy, those anti-Puritans, as one sees them, especially in plays and on the stage, are an obstreperous, denying folk that seldom know their own minds to the end of the story. In fiction, distrusting what the Puritans call duty, they are left gasping in the last chapter, wondering usually what they are to do next; while the delightful ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... pronounced him "bizarre, incoherent, diffuse, bustling with rough modulations and wild harmonies, destitute of melody, forced in expression, noisy, and fearfully difficult," even as England at the same time frowned down his immortal works as "obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy." Berlioz's clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments. "What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?" "Who has taken ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... Twentieth Century Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth; Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity; Wonderful Photography; Wooden Cloth; The Phylloxera; Falling Rents; Boston Civilization; Psychic Blundering; Beecher's Mediumship; A Scientific Cataract; Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity; Hygiene; Quinine; Life and Death; Dorothea L. Dix; The Drift of Catholicism; Juggernaut The Principal Methods of Studying the Brain ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... rebellion against a known authority was more pardonable than that against the unknown, or else his services were of greater value. At any rate he was pardoned not once but many times, being apparently an obstreperous character. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the room like a gale of obstreperous ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule of his cane against the palings of the fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford's cat in the wantonness ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... very significant. Calvin says: "The Prophet indirectly reproves the wickedness of the people, because, as much as lay with them, they destroyed the covenant [Pg 469] of God by their obstreperous cries.... This incredulity, therefore, the Prophet blames, and it is as if he were saying: To what are these complaints to lead? It is just as if you were trying to draw down sun and moon from heaven, and to do away with the difference between day and night, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... votes. He thus adroitly informed these thirsty men of his readiness and his ability to furnish them with all the liquor they might need. Strange as his speech seems to us, it was adapted to the occasion, and was received with roars of laughter and obstreperous applause. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... against him. Thus a long time elapsed, and our hero had grown old enough to be a page. He had received food, clothing, and goodwill, but no one had thought of giving him an education. Sometimes he became obstreperous. He played tricks with the Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to improper uses; he laid traps for upsetting aged and infirm legislators; he tried the coolness of the youngest and best-natured Members of Parliament ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... by which he would have likened the dominion of Heaven to the King of Prussia's body-guard, and only admitted the elect on account of their inches, so tickled mine host's fancy, that he leaned back in his chair, and indulged in a long, dry, obstreperous cachinnation. This irreverence mightily displeased the Corporal. He looked at the little man very sourly, and said in his least ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ascended and began anti-rhino demonstrations. I had no time to fool with rhinos, anyway. I wanted to get through that jungle before the leopards left their family circles. I hurled clods of earth and opprobrious shouts and epithets in the four directions of my four obstreperous friends, and I thought I counted four reluctant departures. Then, with considerable doubt, I descended from my ant hill and hurried down the slope, stumbling over grass hummocks, colliding with bushes, tangling with vines, but progressing ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... northern side of the Border, within the jurisdiction of the Secretary for Scotland. It is possible that my right honourable friend who holds that office, and whom I am pleased to see here with us, will answer the Prime Minister's question. He is responsible for his obstreperous countrymen." The Home Secretary paused, and also smiled happily to himself. He had evaded a trap, and had involved an unloved colleague in its meshes; what more could be required of a highly ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... companions who knew how to laugh, and to whom no other recommendation was necessary than the power of striking out a jest. Among those I fixed my residence, and for a time enjoyed the felicity of disturbing the neighbours every night with the obstreperous applause which my sallies forced from the audience. The reputation of our club every day increased, and as my flights and remarks were circulated by my admirers, every day brought new solicitations for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... brother, the Earl of Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them by eight o'clock in the morning of the day, at noon of which the Prince and Princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at Richmond. During the summer a negotiation was commenced with the obstreperous husband, and he sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his wife for a pension ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... spent on the topmost step of the pilot-house stairs, with a moon that dipped and swam in a turgid sea of drifting clouds. The rest had been rattle and bang of jazz and chatter, and bumping about on a hot, swaying floor into obstreperous shoulders, and the smell of sweetened popcorn and fresh paint and sickly perfume. Wednesday they went for a ride again and ended up at the "Ferry" and danced and drank lemonade. And they passed a table where sat old Mrs. LeMasters with a youngish boy with a ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... mind was busy. Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... search, and they were not found. And then two big policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... pleasure to tell how Mike Murphy vanquished the giant who attacked him, but such a statement would be as untrue as absurd. You have read of the dude who daintily slipped off his kid gloves, adjusted his eyeglasses, and proceeded to chastise an obstreperous cowboy; but take it from me that no such thing ever occurred, except in stories. Nature governs through rigid laws, and two and two will always make four. It might have been creditable to the courage of the Irish youth thus to engage in a bout with a man who would have quickly beaten him to ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... a devil's nightmare that rimmed the circle of flaring light. A man with a gun in his hand climbed aboard the train and made his way to the dining-car, yelling for "cow-grease," and demanding, at the least, a ham-bone. It took the burliest of his comrades to transport the obstreperous one back to solid earth just ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... are, anyway, Fledra!" he exclaimed. He spoke almost irritably. He felt like grasping her up and shaking her as one might an obstreperous child. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... a loud, sudden cackling, like flocks of geese, followed by an obstreperous hoo! hoo! ha! ha! of the laughing jackass (Dacelo gigantea) a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... in an undergraduate, "have you not heard of the obstreperous tenant of Chakravarti, the other zamindar close by—how the law was set on him till he was reduced to utter destitution? When at last he was left with nothing to eat, he started out to sell his wife's silver ornaments, but no one dared buy them. Then Chakravarti's manager offered ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... winters. Her hair, which was drawn away intellectually from an ample and decidedly convex brow, was as black as a patent leather boot, and had a gloss upon it as of carefully-adjusted varnish. Her eyes were very large, very dark and very prominent. Her features were obstreperous and rippling, running from right to left, and her teeth, which were shaded by a tiny black moustache, gleamed in a manner that could scarcely be called natural. She was attired in a black velvet gown trimmed with a very large quantity of beadwork, a bonnet ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... Bull is obstreperous, go to the coffee-house and call for your glass. It is an excellent cure for her complaint, and you will get the latest news retailed in the most engaging manner, with the pleasure of knowing she is biting her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... grown and mild, I knew you once a romping child, Obstreperous much and very wild. Then you would clamber up my knees, And strive with every art to tease, When every art of yours could please. Those things would scarce be proper now, But they are gone, I know not how, And woman's written on your brow. Time draws his finger ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... fault often hides itself and escapes attention. The selfish child may be quiet, clean, and under ordinary circumstances, obedient. He may not even be quarrelsome; and may therefore come under a much less degree of discipline than his obstreperous, impulsive, rebellious little brother. Yet, in reality, his condition calls for much more careful attention than does the condition of ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... giving everything actual the lie, by continually substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. This world, any world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. "The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... were, I turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the lightroom. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, 'who was a very obstreperous man.' I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man seemed to have no liking to anything like work; that he was unruly; that, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... first lord of the Treasury), Gadsden (he of "the Gadsden Purchase"), Marion, Sumter (both of Revolutionary fame), Carteret, Columbus, Stanton, Colfax, Greeley, Chase, Sherman, Seward, Fillmore, Harlan (Senator), Butler (Ben), Johnson (obstreperous "Andy"), Grant (our chiefest military hero), Polk (General), Brown (John Brown, of Ossawatomie), Thomas (General), Sheridan, Wallace (General), St. John (Prohibitionist, Republican governor of Kansas), Lane ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... men, rambling among these fields, ready to bandy jokes with any one, and particularly ready to enter into conversation with the girls, who, however, held themselves aloof, not in a shy, but rather in an independent way, assuming an indifferent manner to the noisy wit or obstreperous compliments of the lads. Here and there came a sober, quiet couple, either whispering lovers, or husband and wife, as the case might be; and if the latter, they were seldom unencumbered by an infant, carried for the most part by the father, while occasionally ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... ruling spirit. Not a man suspected that the plain man of the prairie could develop into the lord of the manor, and put and keep not only the able and cultured Seward, but the turbulent Stanton and the obstreperous Chase, in their places. The pettifogger of the West simply expanded, like its sunflower, in the fierce white light around the chair, and was the lion, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... interchange of congenial thought whether grave or playful, and even to the sports of the children. "His visitors," writes one of them, "have not unfrequently caught him lying on the floor, with a group of these little ones climbing over him in every direction, or dancing around him with obstreperous mirth, to the tune of his violin, while the only contest seemed to be who ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... battalion halted after a little, ate its lunch, and then went on, got a bit too far forward, returned and dug themselves in, and trenches again. It is a hole and corner affair. We were all very cheered yesterday morning by the official news of the French successes at Verdun, and we all got obstreperous and terrorised poor Fritz. The men say they infinitely prefer the front line trenches to training at home. They have more comfortable sleeping accommodation, better food and less work. I like it better myself. Then what seems funny is to come out of the trenches and to be in perfect safety ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack

... Humane Nature extends towards the Knowledge of Nature, by enlarging her Empire beyond the Land of Spectres, Forms, Intentional Species, Vacuum, Occult Qualities, and other Inadequate Notions; which, by their Obstreperous and Noisy Disputes, affrighting, and (till of late) deterring Men from adventuring on further Discoveries, confin'd them in a lazy Acquiescence, and to be fed with Fantasms and fruitless Speculations, which signifie nothing to the specifick Nature of Things, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... deputy, however, became too manifest; though he laid about him with incredible violence, he did it in such wrong places, that the audience soon discovered he was not their old friend the real trunkmaker. With the players the trunkmaker was naturally a favourite; they not only connived at his obstreperous approbation, but cheerfully repaid such damage as his blows occasioned. That he had saved many a play from condemnation, and brought fame to many a performer, was agreed upon all hands. The audience are described as looking abashed ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... manner of rubbish with which they intended to plug up his mouth and nostrils, so that he might perish for lack of breath. These last, however, could by no means perform their appointed duty; inasmuch as the enemy's breath rushed out of his nose in an obstreperous hurricane and whirlwind, which blew the Pygmies away as fast as they came nigh. It was found necessary, therefore, to hit upon some other method of carrying on ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... chap marked doon roight, ayse warrant un!" shouted Timothy from the hill side, where with some trouble, he was holding in the obstreperous spaniels. "He's doon in a roight laine atwixt 't gray stean and yon ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... taken possession of by a crowd of young men who sat and stood packed together like guillemots on a rock. These too, cheated by that rising cloud of the spectacle they had come so far to see, wanted to have a little fun, and began to be very obstreperous. By and by they found out an amusement very much ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... why canst thou breathe us No thrilling harmony, no charming pathos, No cheerful song of love without its bathos? The Furies take thee,— Blast thy obstreperous mirth, thy foolish chatter,— Gag thee, exhaust thy breath, and stop thy clatter, And change thee to a beast, thou senseless prater!— Nought else can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... give you this advice, For I am one of letters: Leave off your rude, obstreperous way, When you are with your betters. And think yourself well off," he said, "That I had mercy on you; For many would have sent you home Without a dress ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... long—so long! She felt happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous, affectionate little foreigners. ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... In one part was a succession of places of public resort, like our tea-gardens in appearance, but devoted to the sale of other beverages; tea being here almost unknown, except as a medicine. From each of them there streamed the mingled sounds of obstreperous music and human voices, while in several there appeared to be a sort of conjuring exhibition in course of performance. Further on, there came from the opposite side of the way the screaming of a flageolet, heard far above its accompaniment of a violin ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... with each couple in alternation. Miss Josephine was very much concerned about Mr. Turner's accident, very happy to know how lucky he had been to come off without a scratch, except for the tear in his coat, and very solicitous indeed about any further handling of the obstreperous gray team; and, forgiving him readily under the circumstances, she renewed her engagement to drive ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... intrigues to employ force against the obstreperous deputies and their allies, the populace of Paris. This time it was planned to bring royal troops from the garrisons in Flanders. And on the night of 1 October, 1789, a supper was given by the officers ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London. I was nearly killed the first weeks, what with the climate, and what with the kindness (and what with the want of kindness), and looked wretchedly, whether Reynolds Peyton saw it or not, and coughed day and night, till Robert took fright, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope 20 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... meantime Rosalie had been busy setting the room in order; Jeanne's hair also had been brushed, and she was dressed. While her mother sat at the window, striving to read, the child, who was in one of her moods of obstreperous gaiety, began playing a grand game. She was all alone; but this gave her no discomfort; she herself represented three or four persons in turn with comical earnestness and gravity. At first she played the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... eye of the philological Jakobsen, the Shetlanders both in speech and looks are remarkably like the Norwegians of the Saettersdal. In that part of Norway the trow is also a very popular terror. Children of a disobedient and obstreperous turn are afraid to venture near a wood at nightfall for fear of a little bogie with a red cap, who may suddenly slide down a pine-tree ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... that those of them who have ever tried to form an opinion on the Anglo-Irish controversy have hardly ever got farther than a loose notion that England had most likely behaved like a bully all through, but that her victim was beyond all question an obstreperous and irreclaimable ruffian, whose ill-treatment must be severely condemned by the moralist, but over whom no sensible man can be expected ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... luck to find you here," he called down to her. Having played their part, he wished now that the birds were at Jericho. Their obstreperous racket made conversation very difficult. Apparently she made him an answer, but he could ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... isn't this one, 'cause she wouldn't keep still a blessed minute'; or I'd say, 'I've faith to b'lieve it's that one, for she'll coo and play with her toes till I gets ready.' 'Twas allays jest so—'I hope,' or 'I've faith,' every time. And soon as it come to me, why, I jest named the obstreperous one Hope and the ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry



Words linked to "Obstreperous" :   aggressive, obstreperousness, defiant



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