"Snigger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an imaginary, but bloated, capitalist, "have no more right to your money than I have. It is intrusted to you to be shared with me." At this point I heard Lady Queenborough sniff and Algy Stanton snigger. I stole a glance at Trix and detected a slight waver in the admirable lines of ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... harm in him. It is true that the excuse made by Sterne for Tristram Shandy, and often repeated for Moore, does not quite apply. There is not much guilt in Little, but there is certainly very little innocence. He knows that a certain amount of not too gross indecency will raise a snigger, and, like Voltaire and Sterne himself, he sets himself to raise it. But he does not do it very wickedly. The propriety of the nineteenth century, moreover, had not then made the surprisingly rapid strides of a few years later, and some time had to pass before Moore was to go out with Jeffrey, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness[obs3]; heyday; laughter &c. 838; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c. 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, , belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation[obs3]; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game at romps; gambol, romp, prank, antic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee, I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer. To ev'rybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do. But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet ev'rybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... experiment. His mirth's a smirk and not a paroxysm; "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism" Do not disturb the "plie" of his prim lips, Neither do cynic quirks and querulous quips. Mirth would guffaw—when hearts and mouths were bigger, OSRICK would shrink from aught beyond a snigger, Such as is stirred by screeds of far-fetched whim. Ay! that's the humour o't, sententious Nym. Let's hail a dying century's latest birth,— The Newest Humour—purged from taint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... images which lie outside your vocabulary and range of thought, then you had better take yourself in hand. You have to decide whether you will be on the side of the angels or on the side of the nincompoops. There is no surer sign of imperfect development than the impulse to snigger at what is unusual, nave, or exuberant. And if you choose to do so, you can detect the cat walking across the stage in the sublimest passages of literature. But more advanced souls ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... but if they come here to the castle, and you're like you are now, they'll be only half warmed up, and say that Master Roy can talk, and some of 'em'll sneer and snigger; but if you come out when they're all here, looking like your father's son in a cavalier hat and feathers, with the gorget on, and the king's colours for a sash, ay, and buff ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... of us; and, just as I came close enough once more to stake my all on a single grab, Aunt Elizabeth, with another of her sardonic chuckles, dived in head-foremost and struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do get through hedges. The sound of her faint spinster-like snigger came to me as I stood panting, and roused me like a bugle. The next moment I too had ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... first brought the Clarion to Mr. Flint's notice. He used to snigger at sight of the paper. He said it made him sure the dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and home-made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook. He had a fashion of strolling down to the paper's office and snipping out all such notices and ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... forward. All lights are put out at half-past ten, and no food allowed in the cabin; but the latter article my friend Avery makes light of, and brings me anything when I am laid up. The young soldier-officers bawl for him with expletives; but he says, with a snigger, to me, 'They'll just wait till their betters, the ladies, is looked to.' I will write again some day soon, and take the chance of meeting a ship; you may be amused by a little scrawl, though it will probably be very stupid ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... helpmate. "I should like to see those who presume for to snigger;" and as she spoke, she threw a look of defiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment, she prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master. Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Jones with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would you please, sir, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry your Highness to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that he had a chronic case of yellow jaundice, was threatened with paresis or had been inadvertently struck by lightning. Perhaps he's under the mystic spell of some "wily Vivien" even now, and laying foolish wagers in his mesmeric sleep. "Can woman hypnotize man? "Well, I should snigger. She can hypnotize anything that wears pants, from the prince at his gilded poker game, to the peasant scattering worm poison in the lowly cotton patch and revolving in his think tank the tenets of Populism; and I'm not sure but ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... himself only; resolutely pushing his way through life on those terms: amid horse-laughter, naturally, and general wagging of beards from surrounding mankind. Extinct mirth, not to be growled at or despised, in Ages running to the shallow, which have lost their mirth, and become all one snigger of mock-mirth. For it is observable, the more solemn is your background of DARK, the brighter is the play of all human genialities and coruscations on it,—of genial mirth especially, in the hour for mirth. Who the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he said—she could see the little snigger with which he had written the words—'You are a philosopher, and I was afraid lest my reply should disturb the course of your reflections on friendship. I confess that I did not entirely understand your letter, but I gathered that the sentiments were correct, and it gave ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... was saying, Sir, the adulteration of Butter has been pushed to such abominable lengths that no British Workman knows whether what he is eating is the product of the Cow or of the Thames mud-banks. (A snigger.) Talk of a Free Breakfast Table! I would free the Briton's Breakfast Table from the unwholesome incubus of Adulteration. At any rate, if the customer chooses to purchase butter which is not butter, he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... see now whose hens!' cried the landowner in triumph. 'They're Yermil, the coachman's, hens! he's sent his Natalka to chase them out.... He didn't send his Parasha, no fear!' the landowner added in a low voice with a significant snigger. 'Hey, Yushka! let the hens alone; catch Natalka ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... domineering gesture towards Beaurepaire. Then the doughty Dard seemed no longer master of his limbs: he rose slowly, with his eyes fastened to hers, and was moving off like an ill-oiled automaton in the direction indicated; but at that a suppressed snigger began to shake Riviere's whole body till it bobbed up and down on the seat. Dard ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the sound of a movement behind him, the swirl of a petticoat, and the clang of a pewter plate as it fell noisily to the floor. His companion looked up swiftly, the smile on his face broadening to a snigger. Claude turned too as quickly as he could and looked, his face hot, his mind suspecting some prank to be played on him; to his astonishment he discovered nothing to account for the laugh. The girl appeared to be bending over the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... said the blind faquir unkindly and there was a snigger. "The treasure will be removed at once—this night, or I will remove myself from Gungapur with all my followers—and go where deeds are being done. I weary of waiting while pi-dogs yelp around the walls they cannot enter. Cowards! ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... atmosphere of deadly peril. He volplaned, he looped the loop. His behaviour was unsurpassable. For his case, if you like, was desperate. I tell you he had seen the effect of his Tudor hall and drawing-room. He had been watching; and nothing, not a murmur, or a furtive snigger, not the quiver of an eyelash, had escaped him. And consider what it meant to him. In a furious climax of expenditure he had achieved the arresting spectacle of his house in Mayfair, and his first night, his house-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... did not know it, it was meant to rouse Mrs. Heron's suspicions; and it succeeded admirably. Her thin, narrow face would flush angrily and she would look across at Isabel significantly, and Isabel would snigger and toss her head, as if she ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... extremely strange. She reeked of ether, for she drank ether now. When she heard of the two-fold "accident," the death of Morange and that of Alexandre, which had brought on Constance's cardiacal attack, she simply gave an insane grin, a kind of involuntary snigger, and stammered: "Ah! ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of Atkinson, who is rather more than seven feet high, he came out anxious for the scalp of that other cat. I never mention this little adventure to Mr. Toots, who is sensitive, but all the other Zoo cats chaff him terribly. Even Jung Perchad and the other elephants snigger quietly as they pass, and Bob the Bactrian, from the camel-house, laughs outright; it is a horrid, coarse, vulgar, exasperating laugh, that of Bob's. Atkinson, however, is all unconscious of the joke, and remains equally affable to cats, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... There was a snigger at that, in the background, by the door; and a crush to get in and see how the rogues took their exposure; for my lady's shrill voice could be heard in the hall, and half the inn was running to listen. Mrs. Masterson, who ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... her surprise and confusion in a nervous snigger, banged the heavy door, and led him through the halls and up the staircases. As she went forward she turned on electric lamps here and there in advance, turning them off by the alternative switches after she had passed them, so that ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... some of the men began to snigger. ''E seems to 'ave got 'isself into a bit of a fog,' remarked Crass in a loud whisper to Slyme, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Ginx's Baby, the order was disobeyed. Occasionally lady visitors went to look at him and give him some food—he was toddling about the room on unsteady legs—but charity seemed to be appalled by the official questions hanging about this child. The master, Snigger, whose business it was every day to ascertain whether the cause of the great parochial quarrel was in, or out of, existence, became a traitor to the Board. When the child grew hungry and dangerously thin, he brought bottles of pap prepared ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... second or two before the horror of the situation dawned on him. That dawn must have been reflected on his face, for his fellow-passenger began to snigger. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... out a sickly snigger. The Frenchman alone got up to make a bow to Davidson's careless nod. His stumps were stuck immovably in his pockets. Davidson ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the purple agitation, dawned upon her, the grim humour of the position overbore every other feeling. Her hand still in his, she began to laugh, and no biting of her lips could do more than change the laugh into an undignified snigger. Instead of profiting by his grip of her, he dropped her hand suddenly as if a hose had been turned on his passion, and this surrender of her hand reduced Eileen to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... telescope at a sun-spot," said Gazen, bringing the instrument to bear upon the sun. "You will then see how fast we are running to perdition. I say—what would our friends in London think if they could see us now? Wouldn't old Possil snigger! Well, I shall get the better of him at last. I shall solve the great mystery of the 'sun-spots' and the 'willow leaves.' Only he will never know it. That's a bitter drop ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... as Chenet called it to himself, that hung down between two flaccid, fat legs, and his apoplectic rotundity of the old, flabby official, and, lifting the white Panama hat which he wore, from his head, he said, with a snigger:— ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Should they see him in his stockings, Racing along the corridor:— Not that he thought it horrid, or Harsh to transfix him with a dagger, (He could not bear the fiddler's swagger), But felt quite sure so droll a figure Would make his rude domestics snigger. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... his side, and, as he gripped it, he appeared to be furiously plucking at his dagger. He had imagined Chapuys and Marillac, the Ambassadors, coming upon guards with broken heads and sending to Paris letters over which Francis and his nephew should snigger and chuckle. ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... snigger. He thought for an instant that Mr Orgreave was being jocular over his head, for he could only connect the phrase 'ancient lights' with the meaner organs of a dead animal, exposed, for example, in tripe shops. However, he saw his ineptitude almost simultaneously with the commission ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... liked to kick Augustus as he walked away with a snigger; but at least he had made it impossible to take advantage of Smythe's offer. It was a new and painful experience to stay outside the confectioner's shop while the other fellows entered, and the matter was freely discussed in my presence by Smythe and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a'most for to make a cat laugh, sir," he said with a snigger, which he immediately flicked away, as it were, with his napkin, resuming his whilom solemn demeanour. "It happen'd, if yer must know, sir, in ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... on the path of the blazing ball that has hurtled a million years, Where the uttermost light glows red by night in the clash of the angry spheres, Where never a tear-drop dims the eye, and sorrows are stifled young, And the Anglo-Indians snigger and sneer with the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... the cheerful fire and comfortably resting after the labours of the day, I dreamed again, and I saw that Horatio Snigger was "the Office Boy" of Mr. Prigg. He had been in the employment of that gentleman about two years. He was tall for his money, standing, in his shoes, at least five feet six, and receiving for his services, five shillings and sixpence a week, (that is, a shilling ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... the boys—it was Noel—gave a little snigger, but when Mr. Anstruther turned with raised eyebrows in his direction, Noel tried, but without success, to look as if he ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... throes of sickness ensued, I need not say. A short time after passing Ramsgate, Serjeant Lankin, who had been exceedingly gay and satirical—(in his calm way; he quotes Horace, my favorite bits as an author, to myself, and has a quiet snigger, and, so to speak, amontillado flavor, exceedingly pleasant)—Lankin, with a rueful and livid countenance, descended into his berth, in the which that six foot of serjeant packed himself I ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray |
