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Unready   Listen
verb
Unready  v. t.  To undress. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unready" Quotes from Famous Books



... snail-shells to be found about; and yet the gardeners complain quite as much of damage to their gardens, especially in the fruit season, by Blackbirds and Thrushes, as the English gardeners and seem equally unready to give these birds any credit for the immense destruction of snails, which, if left alone, would scarcely have left a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... autumn had already touched the trees, and Cartier, having accomplished his exploration, hastened back to Stadacone, where he set about making preparations for spending the winter. A fort was hastily built at the mouth of the St. Croix. But the exiles were unready for the violent season that soon closed in upon them, almost burying their fort in drifting snow and casing the ships in an armour of glistening ice. Pent up by the biting frost, and eking out a wretched existence on salted food, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... frontier against the German forces. The plan itself was an excellent one had he only been able to execute it, for, as we have seen, early success in Southern Germany would have meant the armed assistance of Austria and Italy. But the French army was in a condition more unready, one might truly say, of greater demoralization, thus early, than its severest critics had imagined. Considerable forces were indeed massed about Metz and Strasburg. But the commissariat and transport departments were in ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... three men—two in the wagon and one beside his horse-stared at him as though they had seen him for the first time. They were unready for the passion that possessed him. Not a muscle of his body appeared to move; he was as motionless as the trunk of a tree. But in his eyes and his voice there was, as one of the ranchers said afterwards, "Hell—and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... feel the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard. And I was not unready for the remark which followed a more exhaustive scrutiny ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... paid to the army was not extended to the fleet, which continued totally unready; nor was the organisation of the volunteers carried out in an efficient manner. The excuse afterwards advanced was that not more than 15,000 enrolments were expected, while the actual figure reached 35,000. Besides being from its very bulk less manageable ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... his usual monthly office, and has spread the Table for the Lord's Supper, but it dawns upon us, friends, how useless, how empty is the symbol since it was only ordained 'until He should come.' He has come, and we, the unready, have been ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... in the brim and low in the crown. His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism. As a young man he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had never been unready to do his fellows a good turn. He had a passion for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused him to be nicknamed: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... bivouac. When the sun sets in the East, it is like turning off the gas; you are left in darkness suddenly, without any intervening twilight. As a fact one knows this perfectly well; but habit is stronger than reason, and day after day I went on being perplexed, and often unready for ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... let us suppose, of our second month of war. The fleet has been neglected, and has been overwhelmed, unready and unprepared. We have been beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have established no accidental superiority, but a permanent and overwhelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, one and all; ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... made a powerful lunge that seemed to find the captain unready. But the latter, with a sharp involuntary cry, got his blade up in time to divert the point, by pure accident, with the guard of his hilt. His own point was thus turned straight toward his antagonist; and Tom, throwing his weight after his weapon, impaled himself upon the captain's. For ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... chassepot; they were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armee was at Boulogne looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... procreation will not pass. Besides, [In a higher tone.] the offence is so exorbitant, To mingle with a misbelieving race, That speedy vengeance would pursue your crime, And holy Mahomet launch himself from heaven, Before the unready thunderbolts were formed. [Emperor, taking him by the throat with one hand, snatches out his sword with the other, and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... if there were no actual and deep piercing of the French lines, the pressure upon the French would lead them to call upon the British for help. British attack, while the British force was still unready, would lead to great losses and would exhaust the reserves in men and munitions of both France and Britain. At the worst this would mean that neither France nor Britain would be ready to take the field in their long-promised general offensive ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... himself; there is no way by which the righteousness of one can be credited to another's account; the doctrine of supererogation is wholly false.[1165] The Bridegroom's condemnatory disclaimer, "I know you not," was equivalent to a declaration that the imploring but neglectful ones, who had been found unready and unprepared, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... not see this. All he saw, in the blinding rage which suddenly possessed him, was a horse down, unready for duty, and beside her a horse standing, ready for duty, but restrained by the other. Stringing out a volley of oaths, he stepped to the side of the mare and jerked at her head, but she refused stubbornly to get ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... friend in a sense: "Is Trajan pleased?" whispered Voltaire to his Richelieu; overheard by Trajan,—who answered in words nothing, but in a visible glance of the eyes did answer, "Impertinent Lackey!"—Trajan being a man unready with speech; and disliking trouble with the people whom he paid for keeping his boots in polish. O my winged Voltaire, to what dunghill Bubbly-Jocks (COQS D'INDE) you do stoop with homage, constrained by their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... as tender-hearted a lout as ever lived. In a moment he was on his knees with his arm round the girl's waist, pouring out such halting words of love and devotion as came to his unready brain, cursing his fate, his earldom, and his mother, and assuring Mary that his only chance of happiness lay in his making her his countess. Had Mary liked to say the word at that moment, he would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... his cunning, and his eloquence—they are held in very different estimation. The Homer of the Iliad has little liking for a talker. Thersites is his pattern specimen of such; and it is the current scoff at unready warriors to praise their father's courage, and then ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... two out of the few who got back to the German lines. Most of the Prussians stayed in the ploughed field. Karl Heinz's scream had frozen the blood of the English soldiers, but it had also ruined the major's plans. He and his men, caught all unready, clumsy with the burdens that they carried, were shot to pieces; hardly a score of them returned. The rest of the force were attended to by an English burying party. According to custom the dead men were searched before they were buried, and some ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... of a wet night of early June, with the sea in a tumble and the wind blowing fretfully from the west of north, that the mail-boat made our harbour. For three weeks we had kept watch for her, but in the end we were caught unready—the lookouts in from the Watchman, my father's crew gone home, ourselves at evening prayer in the room where my mother lay abed. My father stopped dead in his petition when the first hoarse, muffled blast of the whistle ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... of Asia by Alexander the Great, though it found the Persians unready, was by no means of the nature of a surprise. The design had been openly proclaimed by Philip in the year B.C. 338, when he forced the Grecian States to appoint him generalissimo of their armies, which he promised to lead to the conquest of the East.[14350] Darius Codomannus had thus ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... rector's family. Celestina looked quite composed; though so very quiet and silent a child, she was neither shy nor awkward. She was too little taken up with herself to have the foolish ideas which make so many children bashful and unready: it never entered her head that other people were either thinking of or looking at her. So she was free to notice what she could do and when she was wanted, and her simple kindly little heart was always pleased to render others a ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... romance, too. It was silly to be unready for surrender. She realized that if she lost him. . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... days of King Ethelred the Unready, when the teaching of good King Alfred was fast fading away from the minds of his descendants, and self-indulgence was ruining the bold and hardy habits of the English, the fleet was allowed to fall into decay, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... organisation of these forces is uniform this "more or less" of readiness exists in precise proportion to the sense of duty which animates the several Armies. Where the spirit of duty and self-sacrifice is low the troops are unready and inefficient; where, as in Prussia, these qualities, by the training of a whole century, have become instinctive, troops really are ready to the last button, and might be poured down upon any one of her neighbours ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... the events since your arrival here. The rest counts for nothing. We are all on the ground here and I propose to act quickly. I learned some matters in Calcutta which have greatly enlightened me." The facile tongue of the renegade was slow to do the bidding of his unready brain. "Damme! But she's a cool one!" the ex-officer concluded, as he caught his breath. But, conscious of her watchful eye, he related all his adventures, with a judicious reserve as to Justine Delande. The burning ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... all perhaps was presented by the orthodox camp. For, in proportion as the Modernist attack developed, was the revival of faith among those hostile to it, or unready for it. For the first time in their lives, religion became interesting—thrilling even—to thousands of persons for whom it had long lost all real savour. Fierce question and answer, the hot cut and thrust of argument, the passion of honest fight on equal ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... save market mornings, is a slug-a-bed town; and even at nine o'clock, when he issued forth after an impatient breakfast, the streets wore an unkempt, unready, unsociable air. Housewives were still beating mats, shopboys washing down windows; ash-buckets stood in the gutter-ways, by door and ope, awaiting ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... work of niceness and despatch, but it is ill training for working on the spars of a rolling ship. John Cutler was mousing clew-blocks on the main-yardarm, the ship lurched heavily, the foot-ropes were wet and slippery, and John, ill-balanced and unready, was cast into the sea. Instant, there was the cry "Man overboard"; the Old Man ordered the helm down, and, springing to the rack, threw a lifebuoy from the starboard quarter; the Second Mate, not seeing him throw it, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... it Him.' Let as pray for His coming. And in the mean time have we a care that our loins be girded about, and our lamps burning; that when He cometh and knocketh, we may open unto Him immediately. We shall be unready to open immediately, if our hands be overfull of worldly matters. It were not well to have to say to Him, 'Lord, let me lay down this high post, and that public work, and these velvet robes, and this sweet cup, and this bitter one—and then I will open unto Thee.' I had rather mine hand ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... extemporaneous, improvised, spontaneous, ad lib, ad libitem [Lat.]. fallow; unsown, untilled; natural, in a state of nature; undressed; in dishabille, en deshabille [Fr.]. unqualified, disqualified; unfitted; ill-digested; unbegun, unready, unarranged^, unorganized, unfurnished, unprovided, unequipped, untrimmed; out of gear, out of order; dismantled &c v.. shiftless, improvident, unthrifty, thriftless, thoughtless, unguarded; happy-go- lucky; caught napping &c (inexpectant) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... you want me to marry her for?" They were obliged to keep up the delusion, and said, "Because she seems suited to you as a companion." That satisfied him. "Oh! we won't be in a hurry," he said, and named a day within a month; and not liking their unready faces, laughed, and dismissed the idea aloud, as if he had not earnestly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... blushing angry stammer in reply; and she suppressed her smile, but felt triumphant in having hit the mark. Unready at retort, he gathered himself up, and said: 'Well, Ave, I have only this to say, that if you choose to support that boy in his impertinences, there will be no bearing it; and I shall see what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Knowles evaded the question,—wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old school-master as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and unready. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... other was laboring in grave peril. The Revenge loomed as a spectral shape while Blackbeard was endeavoring to get her running free in pursuit of the Plymouth Adventure. But slovenly, reckless seamanship had caught him unready. His sails were blowing to ribbons, ropes flying at loose ends, and it was with great difficulty that the vessel could be made ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... Our aim in the world is beauty and happiness; but we are late in learning that they exist in the will and imagination, and not in this or that accredited and venerable thing or circumstance that is mechanically obtruded on our unready attention. If you were put down in the Garden of Eden, and told that you might stay there an hour and no more, what would you do? How would you "improve" your time? Would you run to and fro, and visit the spot where Adam first stood erect, and the place ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... postboy and gave him some money, and patted the neck of his horse. Whether he made some movement that scared it or not, there was very nearly a nasty accident, for the beast started violently, and the postilion being unready was thrown and lost his fee, as he found afterwards, and the chaise lost some paint on the gateposts, and the wheel went over the man's foot who was taking out the baggage. When Lord Saul came up the steps into the light of the lamp in the porch to be greeted by Dr. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James

... unready with his apology, however, and tramped on without again looking behind. Madame La Tour glanced at her ship, which would have to wait for wind and tide to ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... honours, these were great; the greater now thy shame, for thou hast proved both unready and unfit, unworthy offspring of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... said. "There is that little cloud in the east like a man's hand today, and rather like that mailed fist which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking about. But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some tropical storm. France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... unwisely let loose Calvinist iconoclasm among a people who clung to their ancient images though they had renounced their ancient faith. Supinely he allowed Austria and the Catholic League to raise their Croats and Walloons with the ready aid, so valuable in that age of unready finance, of Spanish gold. Supinely he saw the storm gather and roll towards him. Supinely he lingered in his palace, while on the White Hill, a name fatal in Protestant annals, his army, filled with his own discouragement, was broken by ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the curious feeling I had that my father was gone, that he had vanished while my back was turned, leaving me to face someone else. Then, as I stared at him, still unready and speechless, the light died out of his eyes, his lips relaxed, and his hand went up to arrange the lace ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... Hudson. But against a weight, a volume, and a velocity of water such as had to be encountered here, it was now plainly seen that something else would have to be tried. No emergency, however great or sudden, ever finds a man of his stamp unready. As soon therefore as the collapse showed him the defect in his first plan, he instantly set about remedying it by dividing the weight of water to be contended with. At the upper fall three wing-dams were constructed. Just above the rocks a stone crib was laid on the south side, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... order were of the loosest kind, and hence the noise at times was such that even the older pupils found it unbearable; but when the hour for recitation came, somehow a deathlike stillness fell upon the school, and the unready shivered with dread apprehension. And yet he never thrashed the boys; but his fear lay upon them, for his eyes held the delinquent with such an intensity of magnetic, penetrating power that the unhappy wretch felt as if any kind ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... you into the muddy depths whence it springs. I have heard from my brother John, and now expect almost hourly to see him. The Spanish revolution, as he now sees and as many foresaw, is a mere vision. The people are unready, unripe, unfit, and therefore unwilling; had it not been so they would have done their work themselves; it is as impossible to urge on the completion of such a change before the time as to oppose it when ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... "make-up" of a certain kind flourished at the Restoration. "To the King's house," says Pepys, "and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms;[A] and to the women's shift, where Nell (Gwyne) was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. (Imagine the gloating eyes of the old hypocrite.) And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit: and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of 'Flora's ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... Night came, but without darkness or repose,— A dismal picture of the general doom, Where souls, distracted when the trumpet blows, And half unready, with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... his father said: "Truly, Edgar, you have been fortunate indeed, which is another way of saying that you have skilfully grasped the opportunities that presented themselves. The man who bemoans ill-fortune is the man too apathetic, too unready, or too cowardly to grasp opportunity. The man who is called fortunate is, on the other hand, he who never lets a chance slip by, who is cool, resolute, and determined. During the time that you have been away you have made friends of two wealthy merchants, and have rendered them both ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... tending Menelaos of the loud war-cry, the ranks of shield-bearing Trojans came on; so the Achaians donned their arms again, and bethought them of the fray. Now wouldest thou not see noble Agamemnon slumbering, nor cowering, unready to fight, but very eager for glorious battle. He left his horses and his chariot adorned with bronze; and his squire, even Eurymedon son of Ptolemaios Peiraieus' son, kept apart the snorting steeds; and he straitly charged him to have them at hand whenever weariness should come upon his limbs ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... happened very, very quickly. We were taken by surprise, all unready, with our men ashore or mixed among the horses, or carrying tubs in the water. The troops and preventives were over the last dune and galloping down the sand to us almost before Marah had finished speaking; yet even then in all the confusion, as a captain ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright—and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o'clock that evening, on the road that led to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins



Words linked to "Unready" :   off guard, unprepared, ready, unripe, Ethelred the Unready, flat-footed, preparation, readiness, off your guard, napping



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