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Untidy   Listen
adjective
Untidy  adj.  
1.
Unseasonable; untimely. (Obs.) "Untidy tales."
2.
Not tidy or neat; slovenly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books



... not the only part of her letters which showed superior handiwork. In those days there was an art in folding and sealing. No adhesive envelopes made all easy. Some people's letters always looked loose and untidy; but her paper was sure to take the right folds, and her sealing-wax to drop into the right place. Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and might almost have put a sewing machine to shame. She was considered especially great in satin stitch. She spent much time ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... at Ruth for a moment before she answered, and Ruth became conscious that her brown hair was rough and untidy from running about the garden in the March wind, that her hands were not clean, and that there was an ugly rent in her blue checked apron where it had caught on a nail ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis

... door of the small bedroom opposite her, Rilla saw Mrs. Anderson lying on the untidy bed; and Mrs. Anderson was dead. There was no doubt of that; neither was there any doubt that the big, frowzy, red-headed, red-faced, over-fat woman sitting near the door-way, smoking a pipe quite comfortably, was ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... kindness, to recal his pupil to a sense of duty. One night he sent for him to supper, and invited no one else. During the evening he drew out Eric's exercise, and compared it with, those of Russell and Owen, who were now getting easily ahead of him in marks. Eric's was careless, hurried, and untidy; the other two were neat, spirited, and painstaking, and had, therefore, been marked ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the room served for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of the untidy litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation it is to deal with books and papers. Even the implements for writing were not apparent, except when required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder bureau, French made, and French polished. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a pretty, thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she was entirely unaffected and obviously happy. The ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... whom Jenkins, the local policeman, had got in to help him, till some more police should arrive. Jenkins was now upstairs searching the bedroom. The little bronchitic boy sat on the fender, in front of the untidy fireless grate, shivering, his emaciated face like a yellowish white mask, his eyes fixed immovably on his father. Every now and then he was shaken with coughing, but still he looked—with the dumb devoted attention of some ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... May he became thoroughly disgusted with the life he had chosen for himself. The bright sunshine made the shabby carpet and tawdry furniture and soiled mirrors intolerably vulgar. They had just finished a badly cooked, crossly served, untidy dinner, and Roland had no cigar to mend it. Denasia had not eaten at all; she lay on the bright blue sofa with shut eyes, and her faded beauty and faded dress were offensive ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the state of the health, and it shows if we are careless. Nothing so detracts from a girl's appearance as soiled or untidy hair. One of the most potent charms a woman can have is a well-kept, luxuriant, glossy head of hair. Just think how quickly one notices thin, dry, stiff hair on a woman's head. And as for those that carry around diseased scalps, ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry

... was a dark and noisome hole, filled with demijohns and merchandise, with two or three untidy bunks in corners, the air soaked with the smells of thirty years of bilge-water, sealskins, copra, and the cargoes of island traffic. Capriata, Harry Lee, and I sat on boxes at a rough table, which we clutched as the Roberta pitched ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... of the Leatherskins had assembled. There were four of them, for little rosy Cousin John from next door always came in for an Indian game. They had all Indian dresses with high feathers and wooden clubs or tomahawks. Daddy was in his usual untidy tweeds, but carried a rifle. He was very serious when he entered the room, for one should be very serious in a real good Indian game. Then he raised his rifle slowly over his head in greeting and the four childish voices rang out in the war-cry. It was a prolonged wolfish ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Friday, too, if you'll remember, when Frank brought her," said Aunt Matilda, indicating Rosemary by an inclination of her untidy head. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... living-room, which was a large, untidy place that also served as an office. There was a great, flat desk in one corner, and lying on it—among some dusty papers, reports and stock books—was a six-gun, with its belt and holster, a silver watch, a knife, and other odds and ends. These were the property ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... and white. And he stared at the small figure standing at the door, a stoop-shouldered man, white hair slightly untidy, crow's-feet about his tired eyes. An old man, with eyes that carried a sparkle of youth and kindliness. The ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse

... standard of neatness, cleanness, and correctness which an examiner might expect the school to reach. At any rate, the experiment is much too risky to be tried. In the lower classes the results produced would certainly be rough, imperfect, untidy. Therefore self-expression must not be permitted in that part of the school. And if not there, it must not be permitted anywhere, for the longer it is delayed the greater will be the difficulty of starting it and the greater the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... fire her, Sally?" her husband asked, as he had asked of almost every maid they had ever had—of lazy Annies, and untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, as ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... woman to be his daughter-in-law. Soon the son began to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man, and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take the old man into a cemetery, kill him, and bury him in a pit. Her small son, a wise lad ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... rather considerable time, an old servant opened it and made us a sign to follow him across the untidy park. Statues of nymphs, who must have seen the boyhood of the late king, secreted under tree ivy their gloominess and mutilations. At the end of an alley, the sloughs of which were covered with ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... ushered in a lean, scarecrow figure at whose heels (despite scuffling protests from the gendarme without) limped a black, untidy dog. The tramp bowed and began at once to speak in the slow correct French of a well-educated foreigner. He told of a dusty road along which he had toiled; of a coppice and its tempting shade; of the drowsiness of afternoon; ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... and his face clean-shaved, but for a few tufts of grey hair by way of beard, sprouting from the deep furrows on his cheeks and chin, like reeds from the narrow bed of a brook; the razor could not reach them there, and they gave him an untidy and uncared-for appearance. His dress answered to his face—if indeed that could be called dress which consisted of a linen apron and a white kerchief thrown over his shoulders after sundown. Still, no one meeting him in the road could have taken him for a beggar; for his linen was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a small man, and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if by ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... in front of the untidy writing desk, littered like a recent battlefield. The photograph of the American girl drew his eyes. What had happened? Was there not perhaps some word for her? He turned about as if to enquire of the dying man and found Sir Richmond's eyes open and regarding him. In them he saw an expression ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... the few old chairs that were in the room, against the wall, at regular distances from each other. Then she cleared the littered floor of chips, pieces of paper, and various articles that had been left about by the untidy girl who was Mrs. Elder's only attendant, and next straightened the cloth on the table, and arranged the mantel-piece so that its contents no longer presented ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... the room, which was untidy and dirty, and pulled out a drawer in the table. There, among heterogeneous trash, Marjorie noticed several letters. Mrs. Hammer tossed them into Miss ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... your arrangements," whispered the Rector, "but I think perhaps I ought to tell you that Mrs. Ramsay is no great housewife. She is a queer little flighty thing. She spends her time in trying to write plays and bothering managers. There's no harm in her, and he's very fond of her. But it is an untidy, dirty little house! And nothing ever happens at the right time. My sister said I must warn you. She's had it on her mind—as she's had a good deal of experience of Mrs. Ramsay. And I believe Lady Cynthia ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... think of smiling, untidy Billy Evans with a pretty wife as neat as wax, living in a house that she has made as sweet and pretty as a picture—well—I just laugh. Nobody but God could have arranged things and balanced them ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... material. She had presented several families with a small house-plant, and suggested that they try to develop slips from others that she sedulously tended in her own window. In two or three instances she aided untidy and discouraged women to make their rooms more attractive. The fact, also, that the Jocelyns had made their two apartments, that were little if any better than the others, so very inviting had much weight, and there sprang up quite an emulation among some of the simple ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... in their movement and my own, in the dance of the boat and the noise of the shrouds, in the curtsy of the long sprit that caught the ridges of foam and lifted them in spray, even in the free streaming of that loose untidy end of line which played in the air from the leach, as young things play from wantonness, in the rush of the water, just up to and sometimes through the lee scuppers, and in the humming tautness of the sheet, in everything about me there ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... Mrs. Ladybug—"I mean that Johnnie Green would certainly have brushed Betsy Butterfly before adding her to his collection." And then, seeing a blank look on the faces of her hearers, she cried. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed how untidy Betsy Butterfly is! Can it be possible that the airs she gives herself, and her fine manners, have ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... him and was becoming very tired of his noise and bustle in the stillness and subdued light which meant home to her, and which this loud, excitable, untidy man was eternally invading. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... Henry. But a clean room may abound in virtue as well as an untidy one. And a well-kept person surely is no sin. Put off your shoe, child. Ah, you have a slim foot, though no one would think it, to see ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Elsie, examining it, "how very dirty and slovenly I must look; and that will vex papa, for he can't bear to see me untidy. Can't we get in the back way, Sophy? so that I can get a clean dress on before he sees me? I don't mean to deceive him. I will tell him all about it afterwards, but I know he wouldn't like to see me ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... thanks, and apologies for this untidy letter written in haste, pray believe me, my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... had given up all thought of interfering, and was watching, curiously, the round head with its untidy blond hair. ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... had simply left. Instead of coming into the hayfield at once and enjoying it, she uttered so many warnings and gave so much advice against disaster—"better take this," and "better not take that"—that by the time they got there the hayfield had lost all its wonder. It was just a damp, untidy hayfield. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... counting-house, and in such a business as the manufacture of cigarettes by hand litter of all sorts accumulates rapidly. The "Famous Cigarette Manufactory of Christian Fischelowitz from South Russia" is about as dingy, as unhealthy, as untidy, as dusty a place as can be found within the limits of tidy, well-to-do Munich. The room is lighted by a window and a half-glazed door, both opening upon a dark court. The walls, originally whitewashed, are of a deep rich brown, attributable partly to the constant fumes and ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth, and the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so dear to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the short intervals of rest ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle now, although in the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... chosen it for a bed. You must not suppose, however, that the disruption and land-slip of Thingvalla took place quite in the spick and span manner the section might lead you to imagine; in some places the rock has split asunder very unevenly, and the Hrafna Gja is altogether a very untidy rent, the sides having fallen in in many places, and almost filled up the ravine with ruins. On the other hand, in the Almanna Gja, you can easily distinguish on the one face marks and formations exactly corresponding, though at a different ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... the handsome looks. You will get the jaded face, and the dull, lusterless eyes, and the untidy hair with the dye showing on it. You will not get the exquisite dresses. You will get dirty, shabby frocks and slommicking dressing-gowns, such as your cook would be ashamed to wear. You will not get the charm and fascination. You will get the after-headaches, the complainings and ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it's a pleasure to you...Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy enough without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... good example by being neat and moderate herself! I don't approve of hair being allowed to grow long at your age, but if it is long, it ought certainly to be kept in bounds. Yours is hanging all over your shoulders at this moment. Most untidy! I am speaking for ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and you're always jolly, and you never complained. You always spent a lot of money, but it was a pleasure to see you spend it; and then you never offended me. Most women offend men by coming around looking untidy and sort of unkempt, but somehow you always knew the value of your beauty, and you always dressed up. I always thought that maybe some day the fellow would come along, grab you, and make you happy in a nice ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than she needed that there would have been no excuse for any one to have been untidy. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... boards. Only in the houses of magnates was recourse had to tiles imported from China or slates of copper-bronze. In the better class of house, the roof-boards were held in place by girders, but humble folks used logs of timber, or stones, to prevent wind-stripping, and these weights imparted an untidy, rude appearance ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... 'coloured' most of the walls, and mended all the linen, which had been in a sad condition—Miss Anna's powers being rather intellectual than practical. And through it all she kept a natural daintiness and refinement, was never clumsy, or loud, or untidy. She came and went so lightly—and always bringing with her the impression of something hidden and fragrant, a happiness within, that gave a dancing grace and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ignorance of food matters under the pretext that she was displaying great housekeeping knowledge. She told Peter that he ought to keep his champagne on ice. "That champagne will spoil if it isn't kept on ice." She complained because some bottles of Burgundy had dust on them. "That's not merely untidy," she said, "but it's bad for the wine. It ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle." She criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. "All your game should be hung," she said. She put her finger or her eyes into every drawer ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... questioner, and the instinctive antagonism of race vibrated in his truculent reply. The carter was a beery-faced, untidy-looking brute, but powerfully built and with huge shoulders. Sir Timothy, straight as a dart, without overcoat or any covering to his thin evening clothes, looked like a stripling in front ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... could see a small untidy room with a sloping roof. The floor, the chairs—not common ones but of the early Queen Anne fashion with leathern seats—an old escritoire, were strewn with papers. The occupant and owner was invisible. But she could hear his voice. He was remonstrating ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... phoebe, crested flycatcher, and kingbird. The first two prefer the woods, the phoebe generally selects a mossy rock or a bridge beam, the fourth nests in a hollow tree and often decorates its home with a snake-skin. The kingbird builds an untidy nest in an apple tree. Our American crow is, of course, a member of this little community of birds, and that in spite of persecution, for in the spring one or two are apt to contract a taste for young ducklings ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... house in Carlton House Terrace, on the 23rd November. After waiting some while, following, as we did, about a dozen previous waiters on the Chancellor, we were shown into Mr. Gladstone's working room, or den. The room was very untidy. Placards, papers, letters, newspapers, magazines, and blue boots on the table, chairs, bookshelves, and the floor. It looked, altogether, as if the window had been left open, and the contents of a miscellaneous newspaper, book, and parliamentary ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... dim gas-light, of little shops on the ground floor, and of little murky gateways leading to the habitations above. Beside the gateway of No. 11 was a small workman's drinking shop, sometimes called in Paris a zinc on account of the polished zinc bar which is its principal feature. Untidy, slouching people filled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... a gush of tears blinded his eyes and he turned, blinking them away, to the untidy quires of score paper which he had tried to choose instead. It could not be that it was too late to alter that choice. The terror, for a moment, became articulate. She believed that it was too late. That was why she ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... a subject that it should be unnecessary to touch upon, but, unfortunately, too many bright, pretty, carefully-dressed girls degenerate into careless, fretful, untidy and illy-clad young wives, whose presence is anything but a joy forever to the individuals who must face them across the family board for three hundred and sixty-five days in every year. And it is this careless young woman who is first ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice; but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed to her untidy. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... Poste-Restante, at the suggestion (not of Mr. Finch—there I was wrong)—at the suggestion of Zillah, who had relatives in foreign parts, and had tried Poste-Restante in her case too. So Mrs. Finch driveled mildly on, in her large loose untidy handwriting, to the bottom of ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... my courtyard! It seems carpeted with snow, so many are the cherry-blossoms on its pavement. They say I am untidy that I permit it to be untouched by broom or brush. It is cleaned and spotless all the year, save at this the time of cherry-blossoms, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... looked round the room; it no longer seemed the same place to her. Beth's cheerful chatter had already driven away the evil spirit of dejection, and taken the old lady out of herself. Untidy child! She had left her work on the floor, her scissors on the bed, disarranged the window-curtain, and upset a chair. If she would not do any more unpicking when she returned, she must be made to put things straight. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... would think a little more of my position, and take greater pains with your appearance," returned her brother, in an annoyed voice. "What would Grace say to see what a fright you make of yourself? It is a sin and a shame for a woman to be untidy or careless in her dress; it is unfeminine! it is unlady-like!" hurling each separate ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... George Hewlett's two girls with their hair fastened up in womanly guise, and their cousins becurled as before; but there was nothing particularly untidy, and Mary held ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the working-men in the factory, starting on his homeward way. It was not a pleasant road, this street along the edge of the city. The town showed itself from its most disagreeable side here, with malodorous factories, rickety tenements, untidy open stretches and dumping grounds offensive both to eye ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... Captain Jonas Baker. Abbie, who was a systematic housekeeper, approved of his habit of wiping his feet before he entered the door and the careful fashion he had of replacing any chair he moved; most men, she averred, were so thoughtless and untidy. But it was with Zenas Henry that the young man won his greatest triumph, the two immediately coming into harmony on the common ground of motor-boating. Most of the male visitors who dropped in at the white cottage came only to see Delight, but here was ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... were two gardens, divided by an iron railing. The Millars' garden was very untidy and forlorn, and filled with nettles, and thistles, and groundsel, and all kinds of weeds, for Mr. Millar did not care for gardening, and Mrs. Millar had six little children, and had no time to look ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton

... Committee to arrange for the Summer Camp of the In-Wrong Married Women whirled through the untidy Suburbs in a next year's Motor Car, and Loretta was nowhere except right up on the front ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... as a rule, are anything but pretty. Their hair is nearly always fringed over the forehead and temples, while at the back it is drawn into a knot, from which one end invariably straggles, giving a most untidy effect. The wealthier women wear their finger nails very long, in some instances almost as long as the finger itself, and often this nail is protected by an artificial shield of silver. All the women have their ears pierced, and many of them wear a round bone ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... goes on to tell, as you would expect, how the Colonel died that year, before the swallows came flying north and home again. He was buried, while little Rupert and Rupert's mother looked on, in that untidy corner of the Boulogne Cemetery, where many another English half-pay officer had ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... after Lionel's return from St. Helen's with the only "slavey" attainable, in the shape of an untidy, middle-aged Irish woman, with red hair, and a hot little spark of temper glowing in either eye. Putting this unpromising female in possession of the fresh, clean kitchen of the cabin was a trial, but it had to be done; and the young mistress, with all the ardor ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... little time, a girl, dirty, ragged, and untidy, came into the room, and taking Duncan up in her arms, carried him upstairs, Elsie following with ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... flannels for scouring, and chamber bucket cloths, which last should be of a kind and color different from any thing else. All these must be neatly hemmed and run, or seamed, if necessary. Nothing in a well directed family should bear the impress of neglect, or be suffered to assume an untidy appearance. Clothes bags of different sizes, should also be provided, of two yards in length, and either one breadth doubled, in which case only one seam will be required; or of two breadths, which makes the bag more suitable ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... dress to favour. In a letter from a lady, it is very wisely said, in writing to a contemporary, "For active exercise, a dress ought to be cut all in one—'princess,' as the milliners call it—and so arranged in the skirt that there is no drapery which will catch in things, come unstitched, and look untidy; everything wants to be taut and trim, like tailor's work. But even the ladies' tailors will insist upon making a skirt and little jacket-bodice, instead of a dress in one piece. It is almost impossible to use the arms freely—to go out in a sailing-boat, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... perfectly calm and observant spirit I read the closely-printed column. My eye paused for some time at an account of my personal appearance—"a small, insignificant-looking man, with straight blue-black hair, like a Japanese doll, and an untidy moustache, speaking very deliberately and with ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... of the lane, where it came out upon the untidy but homely looking yard, stood a largish black and tan dog, his head on one side, his ears cocked, his short stub of a tail sticking out straight and motionless, tense with expectation. He was staring at a wagon which came slowly along the main road, drawn by a ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... great improvement in the general state of things about the house. The furniture had been repaired and furbished up. There were clean covers to the sofas and chairs in the drawing-room, and a new carpet in my mother's chamber, while the servants had a less dingy and untidy look than formerly, showing that they ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... the wall above a large autotype of the chief figure in Titian's Virgin of the Assumption, is very inviting. Altogether the room is the room of a good housekeeper, vanquished, as far as the table is concerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, betrays the style of the advertised "drawing-room suite" of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper and panelling are dark, throwing ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... generation of grown people have read with delight the beautiful novels of J. Fenimore Cooper, Esq., but they have been disappointed in not finding any living examples of his noble heroes. As a general thing, the Indian of our day is an untidy lord of the soil, over which he roams unfettered by any laws of society, and often—in his wild state—not controlled by its decencies or in possession of its privileges. But I think this is the fault of Christians more interested in foreign pagans, while neglecting ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... creature, compact of large, soft, gracious curves and swaying movements—with her nimbus of pale golden hair, and curiously floating, undulating walk, rather reminding one of a stray goddess. Always untidy with hooks lacking at important junctures, and the trimmings of her hats usually pinned on with a casualness that occasionally resulted in their deserting the hat altogether, she could still never be other than delightful and irresistibly desirable ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... much surprise as it was possible for him to show when at last she stood with outstretched hand before him. He had only an imperfect recollection of an ill-clad, untidy-looking child, with pale tear-stained cheeks, and dark unhappy eyes. The march of the years had been a thing whose effects he had altogether underestimated. The girl who stood now facing him was slight, and there was something of the child left in ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... better life, then, is a life of utter solitude, Uncle Joachim thought? I wish I knew—I wish I knew——" But what it was she wished she knew was hardly clear in her mind; and her thoughts were interrupted by a very untidy, surprised-looking maid-servant, capless, and in felt slippers, who had darted down the steps and was unfastening the leather apron and pulling out the rugs with hasty, agitated hands, and trying to pull Susie out ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... window with a sigh of pity for the miserable creatures below. His glance strayed over the untidy kitchen which bore all the marks of the most extreme poverty and he gave another sigh of pity for the man who had been brought so low in the last days of his life, the man whom he had known in the time ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... procession picked its way in squeaking pride, with Mrs. Vickers and Selina bringing up the rear. The children went by with little set, important faces; but Miss Vickers's little bows and pleased smiles of recognition to acquaintances were so lady-like that several untidy matrons retired inside their houses to wrestle grimly with feelings ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... should be seen than she wished to see. He came nearer and nearer, and she was yet at the window, her heart beating audibly. Could her eyes deceive her, or was it indeed so? His form was erect and his step firm, and, though his clothes were the same, they did not look so untidy. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... weren't cold in that open car," Lewis Elliot said as he helped Pamela and Jean to remove their wraps. "D'you mind coming into my den? It's warm, if untidy. The drawing-room is so little used that it's about as cheerful ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... spirit!" For a fleeting second the boy's eyes looked away beyond Jean—untidy, attentive, comprehending—beyond the neutral-tinted walls and the shabby carpet of the Hotel Railleux, seeing in vision the things that were to come. Then, with his swift impulsiveness, he flung his dream from him. What mattered the future? What mattered the past? He was here ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... the weather had begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a Catholic church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... red-headed boy who stood just outside the circle, munching an apple and staring at him with astonished blue eyes, and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief. There was no mistaking him. He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy self-importance. When he spoke, the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... glance strayed from the little log building to the untidy litter of rusty tin cans and broken bottles that ornamented its dooryard, and the warped and broken panels of the abandoned corral that showed upon the weed-choked flat across the creek. Stepping to the door, she peered into the interior where ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... evidently been used as an unlicensed dumping ground for some time, for all sorts of odds and ends, old boots, bits of stuff, silk and rags, broken bottles and empty tin cans, lay about between the bushes or half buried in the earth. What had once been an orderly garden was now an untidy receptacle for waste. The pedantically neat detective looked about him in disgust, then suddenly he forgot his displeasure and a gleam shot up in his eye. It was very little, the thing this man had seen, this man who saw ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... having, for the most part, to catch trains, in order to keep other appointments with other committees, for they were all busy people. Mary, Mrs. Seal, and Mr. Clacton were left alone; the room was hot and untidy, the pieces of pink blotting-paper were lying at different angles upon the table, and the tumbler was half full of water, which some one had poured out ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... heard you were here, and came over just as I was," said she, glancing at the same time at her rich, though rather untidy morning wrapper. After asking Mary if she wasn't sorry George had gone, and if she expected to find Mr. Stuart, she said, "I suppose you know Ella is here, and breaking every body's heart, of course. She went to a concert with us last evening, and looked ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... untidy the room looks at this season of the year; really you and Olive ought to go into the conservatory and see if you can't ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... about, Mr. McFarland and Bok began to note the disreputably untidy spots which various municipalities allowed in the closest proximity to the centre of their business life, in the most desirable residential sections, and often adjacent to the most important municipal buildings and parks. It was decided to select a dozen cities, pick out the most flagrant instances ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... high-bred Southerners, my boy. Quite the air of a man of the world— hasn't he?" To all of which the distinguished sheep- painter made no other reply than a slight nod of the head, as he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling —Tomlins's immaculate appearance being a constant offence to the untidy painter. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... available spot is under cultivation. The stone houses in Tete are cemented with mud instead of lime, and thatched with reeds and grass. The rains, having washed out the mud between the stones, give all the houses a rough, untidy appearance. No lime was known to be found nearer than Mozambique; some used in making seats in the verandas had actually been brought all that distance. The Portuguese evidently knew nothing of the pink and white marbles which I found at the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... gracious!" exclaimed Carlotta; "not through a medium, I beg of you, Peter! I don't want spook messages that way! I don't mind a nice little Ouija or Planchette, but a common, blowsy, untidy medium person,—and they're all like that,—I can't ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... me!" he cried, stopping dead. "Did I come on this voyage in order to catch rheumatism and pneumonia? Really one might have credited Vinrace with more sense. My dear," Helen was on her knees under a table, "you are only making yourself untidy, and we had much better recognise the fact that we are condemned to six weeks of unspeakable misery. To come at all was the height of folly, but now that we are here I suppose that I can face it like a man. My diseases of course will be increased—I ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... herring or apple, and anything else its mother eats, and sometimes even sips of beer or gin. If it cries, it is joggled about or slapped, and as soon as ever it is able to sit up, it is put down on the pavement among a number of other dirty, untidy children and left to take care of itself. When a little girl is seven she is thought quite old enough to look after all the younger ones, and on Saturdays she goes off with other little girls, pushing a rickety old perambulator or a wooden cart, with ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... his name is entirely wanting when the highest credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... day, then saw her almost daily. Little by little I took to calling at all times, and sleeping with her. The more I had her, the more I liked her. She was a very nice woman in most ways, I scarcely ever found her untidy, dirty, or slammerkin. If not dressed, she had a clean wrapper on, had nearly always silk stockings on, and a clean chemise; and therefore call when I might she was ready to be fucked at a minute's notice. She was ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... to understand how it is that the dirty, untidy young wife, who, when her husband returns hungry and tired from a long day's work, holds up a smilingly assured face to be kissed, exclaiming, "Gracious! if I hadn't forgot all about your tea!" and clatters together an extravagant ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... comfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snow sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... you keep your clothes is rather wonderful," he went on. "One never sees you untidy; all you wear looks just as it ought to look. One feels it wouldn't look half as well if it was worn by anybody else. Yet you're generally occupied and your work's not clean. I can't touch a cooking pot without getting black, and ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... but before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry. A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... so crowded that schoolmaster Blom had to stand close to the engine; the heat at his back was intolerable; his morning coat was being covered with grease spots, while he stood, with his gaze rivetted on the untidy head of a servant girl and endured the rancid smell of the hair-oil. But he did not see a ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor, and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her, and something crunched under her foot. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... merchandise, dry goods and groceries, and hardware—anything the purchaser might desire from ham and bacon and tinned goods to shirts and overalls, spurs and guns. Behind it stood the proprietor, a slant-eyed, thievish-looking Mexican, while behind him were his untidy shelves—a further jumble of commodities. He looked his approval at the girl, his professional interest at ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... month been increasing in longitude, until train-bearers are becoming necessary. It is conceded by all that the dresses of prevailing immoderate length, sweeping the ground at every step, are among the silliest foibles of Fashion; expensive, inconvenient, and untidy. Recently, in several places, practical reformers, as bold as Joan d'Arc, have discarded the trailing skirts, and adopted the far more convenient, equally chaste, and more elegant dresses of Oriental women. Some ridicule them; others sneer contemptuously ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... showed us how to make coffee—according to the Arabian method. Arabia must be a very untidy country if they made coffee often over there. He dirtied two saucepans, three jugs, one tablecloth, one nutmeg-grater, one hearthrug, three cups, and himself. This made coffee for two—what would have been necessary in the case of a party, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... the bathroom door closed as he bathed and shaved. She was asleep again as he stole out, one arm flung loosely on the counterpane, her hair untidy on the pillow. He kissed a lock of it, and let himself ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... Mary Norris. The Magdalen. The Uncomplimentary Invitation. Theft from Necessity. Patrick M'Keever. The Umbrella Girl. The two young Offenders. His courageous intercourse with violent Prisoners. Not thoroughly Baptized. The puzzled Dutchman. Hint to an Untidy Neighbor. Resemblance to Napoleon. The Dress, Manners, and Character of Sarah, his wife. The Devil's Lane. Jacob Lindley's Anecdotes. Singular Clairvoyance of Arthur Howell, a Quaker Preacher. Prophetic Presentiment of his Mother. The aged Bondman ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... her guide, on reaching the first landing, opened a door without the ceremony of knocking, and revealed a poor, untidy room, in which a coarse, unshaven man was sitting, in his shirt ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... on. Fixie grew tired and cross, and Martha put him to bed; and it was not till nearly the big people's dinner-time that Rosy came back to the nursery, swinging her hat on her arm, and looking rather untidy and tired too. "I think I'll go to bed," she said. "It makes me feel funny in my head, ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth

... Genoa; the Italy of 1844; Dickens charmed with its untidy picturesqueness; he is idle for a few weeks; his palace at Genoa; he sets to work upon "The Chimes"; gets passionately interested in the little book; travels through Italy to read it to his friends in London; reads it on December 2, 1844; is soon back again in Italy; returns to London in the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... sat, an intent, untidy, unkempt man, sunk deep in the cushions of an easy chair. His face was calm, with relaxed jaw and eyes that seemed vacant. But each time he would rouse himself from the chair to pencil new notations on the pads of paper ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... continues there is a dead brick wall; on the other side, bounding a little space of unpaved ground, rather higher than the lane, there are a few old brick cottages, of very mean and dirty appearance. At the doors of some of the cottages squalid, untidy women were lounging; some of them sitting upon the doorstep, with their elbows on their knees, smoking, and looking stolidly miserable. We were now getting near where the cholera made such havoc during its last visit,—a pestilent jungle, where disease is always prowling about, "seeking whom it can ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... for she well knew that Mrs. Horne was a careful person, and when she promised anything it was always well done. "But brush your hair, Polly," she said, "it looks very untidy flying all ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... familiar surroundings seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the office-boy—a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... much to the distress of Alphonse. He looked a mere wreck of his former self—haggard and unshaven, with hard lines around his weary eyes. He had not changed his clothes, and they were wrinkled and untidy. Across the polished floor was a perceptible track, worn by hours of restless striding to and fro. Now, after waiting impatiently for Victor Nevill, and wondering why he did not come, Jack had tried to nerve himself ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... without a mustache is no longer a man. I do not care much for a beard; it almost always makes a man look untidy. But a mustache, oh, a mustache is indispensable to a manly face. No, you would never believe how these little hair bristles on the upper lip are a relief to the eye and good in other ways. I have thought over the matter a great deal but hardly ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... laboratory. "Really!" he said to a thickly bandaged Dr. Berry who was attempting to rescue an undamaged electroencephalograph from a gleeful fireman's ax, "can't you test your hypothesis without being so untidy?" ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia

... our Minister, Mr. Marsh, though suffering with a lame foot, took me in charge, and in due course of time I was presented to King Victor-Emmanuel. His Majesty received me informally at his palace in a small, stuffy room—his office, no doubt—and an untidy one it was too. He wore a loose blouse and very baggy trousers; a comfortable suit, certainly, but not at all conducing to an ideal ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... room ought to satisfy her, for though untidy in female eyes, it did not betray ultra self-neglect. The fire was brisk, there was a respectable luncheon on the table, and he had even treated himself to the Guardian, some new books, and a beautiful photograph ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... anything of the kind, 'said Ida coolly. 'I know the state of my desk quite as well as she does. I daresay it's untidy. I haven't had time to put ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... at last! Deacon, I can't ask you to come in, we are so untidy; but I couldn't pack as I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... kitchen which, though untidy and dim, struck her as more than passably clean; and it crossed her mind at once that its cleanliness must be due to Nuncey and its untidiness to Mrs. Benny. The dimness was induced by a crowd of geraniums in the window and a large bird-cage blocking ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... frieze skirt against her legs, lifted her battered peacock tam-o'-shanter; her greyish blouse was worn and old, her shoes were split, her little hands rough and red, her neck browned. Her dark hair waved untidy across her broad forehead, her face was short, her upper lip short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her lashes long and dark, her nose straight; but her grey eyes were the wonder-dewy as if opened for the first time that day. She looked at Ashurst—perhaps ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Miss KAYE-SMITH in Three against the World (CHAPMAN AND HALL) colours up life with lavish brush. We have a returned convict who fiddles in the rain for the benefit of dancing village children; we have impresarios who stand at the doors of inns and hear him thus fiddling; an untidy heroine who speaks in gasps and gurglings; and a lover who goes to literary parties in London and therefore (the inference is implied by the author) falls in love with two ladies at once. Such a novel is refreshing after the mathematical accuracy with which clerks, barmaids ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... villages of these poor children of the desert are not so untidy as the one described above. There is a wide difference in the sanitary ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... the popularity of the room, as borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy shelves accommodated a quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... hermit, on the edge of Windsor Forest, and could hardly be separated, even for a week's holiday, from his beloved Spectator. His output of work was enormous and incessant, and was throughout critical and didactic. The style was pre-eminently characteristic of the man—tangled, untidy, ungraceful, disfigured by "trailing relatives" and accumulated epithets; and yet all the time conveying the sense of some real and even profound thought that strove to express itself intelligibly. As the style, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... gaze my fill at the contents of the dark room I was led to the biologists' cubicle; Nelson and Day had from the first decided to camp together, each having a habit of methodical neatness; both were greatly relieved when the arrangement was approved, and they were freed from the chance of an untidy companion. No attempt had been made to furnish this cubicle before our departure on the autumn journey, but now on my return I found it an example of the best utilisation of space. The prevailing note was neatness; the biologist's microscope stood on a neat bench surrounded by enamel dishes, vessels, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... found as he took us about amongst the crew of seven men, all wearing petticoat canvas trousers, that the big lugger was very dirty and untidy, wanting in paint, and with the deck, or pont as the skipper called it, one litter of baskets, packages, and uncoiled ropes. On the other hand she seemed to be very long and well shaped, and her masts, which were thick and short, had large yards and tremendous ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... untidy-looking creature; it seemed harmless enough; a sort of Dobbin in Vanity Fair in ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... "Untidy I call 'em, always sticking to a fellow's coat! If it wasn't for the Torchlights, I'd have gone ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... the case of Soping Hall. There will be none of that untidy straggling arrangement about it which detracts so largely from the beauty of Soping Barnet, Little Soping and Soping Monachorum. In Soping Hall the billiard-room will be the village club, the armoury the blacksmith's shop, the housekeeper's room the place where you buy buttons and balls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... Englishman; but beyond that point he was different, altogether different from what he had been before. Between him and his accustomed night's rest came the eager face and passionate words of a girl—a lanky, untidy, and, in his opinion, most disagreeable girl. Still, she had roused him as he had never yet been roused. She had absolutely awakened a sort of conscience in him. For the first time in his whole existence, he carefully considered the question, who is ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... around the house he sat on the veranda in a great splint-bottomed arm-chair—a little untidy figure, more or less caved in from chest to abdomen, which made his short thin legs hanging just above the floor seem ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... interior, and came back to usher him into the drawing-room. The flat was expensively furnished, but very untidy. He at once perceived, however, that the "former" Mr. Okasaki was not romancing when he boasted of his artistic tastes. The Japanese articles in the room were gems of ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy



Words linked to "Untidy" :   rambling, disheveled, unkempt, slouchy, untidiness, rumpled, unclean, hugger-mugger, soiled, littered, straggling, disorderly, dishevelled, messy, tousled, straggly, dirty, tidy, higgledy-piggledy, frowsy, topsy-turvy, sluttish, scraggly, sloppy, jumbled, unfastidious, blowzy, ungroomed, cluttered, sprawling, slovenly



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