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Disconcerting   /dˌɪskənsˈərtɪŋ/   Listen
Disconcerting

adjective
1.
Causing an emotional disturbance.  Synonym: upsetting.  "An upsetting experience"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Disconcerting" Quotes from Famous Books



... I did not accomplish—my mission," replied Von Barwig, who had gained command of himself to some extent, and could speak without giving evidence of his emotion. "It is extremely kind of you to remember me!" His retiring, bashful manner was somewhat disconcerting, but beneath it there was the unmistakable evidence ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... Retz nodded sagely, with a quiet satisfaction in his own prevision, which to one less bold and reckless than the young clerk of Dulce Cor would have proved disconcerting. Then he propounded his ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... astonishment that he was not as strong as he had thought he was. Political loyalty is such a fickle thing. A number of aldermen with curious names—Horback, Fogarty, McGrane, Sumulsky—showed signs of being tampered with. He hurried at once to Messrs. Hand, Schryhart, and Arneel with this disconcerting information. They had been congratulating themselves that the recent victory, if it resulted in nothing else, would at least produce a blanket 'L' road franchise, and that this would be sufficient to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... came through the next day to set his snares, the Harn was prepared to test his snakeproof pants. They held, which was disconcerting to the Harn, but it was a hard creature to convince, once thoroughly aroused. Ed was not too sure of how well the pants would stand up to persistent assault himself. After the third ambush, he took to spraying suspicious looking spots with tobacco juice. He shot two more stingers ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... had given him very little definite information, and it was disconcerting to recognize that he must now rely entirely upon his ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... what Jaeger [Note: In En literaert Livsbillede] has to give us of the disconcerting results ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... another, he and his father. But his mother! He was not at all sure. He visualised the scene: the drawing-room at Chester Terrace. His mother's soft, rustling entrance. Her affectionate but well-bred greeting. And then the disconcerting silence with which she would await his explanation of Malvina. The fact that she was a fairy he would probably omit to mention. Faced by his mother's gold-rimmed pince-nez, he did not see himself insisting upon that detail: "A young lady I happened to find asleep on a moor in Brittany. And seeing ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... other women, her friends and confidants. The moment of "the crisis" arrives, and, taking refuge in "a savage solitude," in which even the sight of a male servant is hateful to her, she sets down with disconcerting lucidity all she has observed in other women, and in herself. These other women are also of the North: Lillie Rothe, Agatha Ussing, Astrid Bagge, Margarethe Ernst, Magna Wellmann.... Her memory invokes them all, and they reappear. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... and talked about more light, when already his young eyes were blinded by the lustrous dazzle. Oh, well! It was all in the day's work, all in the difference between nineteen and thirty-nine, he told himself as patiently as he was able. And his mother at thirty-nine, he realized with disconcerting clearness, was infinitely older than Professor Mansfield's wife at sixty. Indeed, he sometimes wondered if she ever had been really young, ever really young enough to forget her heritage of piety in healthy, worldly ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... She had, in fact, been counting on that help for the last several years, after her mother became an invalid and she knew that it was only a matter of time before Julia's hands would be set free for other labor. It was quite too disconcerting now, after having got along all these years on the strength of the help that was to come, to find her capable sister snatched away from her by two young things in this ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... no fastenings upon dwelling-houses in Japan—we found neither chairs nor tables, the people all sitting, eating, and sleeping upon the floors, which were as neat and clean as a newly-laid table-cloth. The humility and deference of all classes was quite disconcerting, for when we entered or departed from a house, the host, hostess, and children bowed their heads until their foreheads touched the floor. Japanese women, both in features and general appearance, are far ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... with a rippling laugh which made him sit up blinking at her. "Are you apologizin' for not makin' love to me?" she questioned impertinently. "Say—that's funny." And she went off into another disconcerting peal ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... does not always answer, and when one of the victims yawns and the other asks a matter-of-fact questions it is disconcerting even to an accomplished operator. However, Barber gallantly determined on one ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral furniture belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr Elliot Smith's decision was, of course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... have asked him a number of questions she wanted answered, but she refrained. He suddenly turned and looked at her full in the face. He had been gazing fixedly at the sea, and these movements of quickness were disconcerting, especially as Tamara found herself caught in the act ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... a triumph is sometimes as disconcerting as to fail. There was no chorus of indignation, no denial of Maturin's authority, no good-natured scoffing such as Morewood had expected. He looked round on faces fallen into a sudden troubled seriousness; no voice was raised in protest, gay or grave. In an instant he ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... tone of his voice brought the quick colour to her cheeks; it was so wonderful, so disconcerting to be looked at and spoken to in that way. She caught her breath and wondered if it were not a dream after all. "Dear," another of those deep, searching looks, "this is a big, primitive country and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... go with the piano in the Concerto? Had they taken care to have enough rehearsals? There are several passages that require minute care; the modulations are abrupt, and the variety of the movements is somewhat disconcerting for the conductor. And, in addition to this, the traitor triangle (proh pudor!) [Oh shame!], however excited he may be to strike strong with his cunning little rhythm, marked pianissimo, provokes ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... to in preference. He, deceived by Sunderland and the other perfidious ministers of James II.; assured our Court that D'Avaux's reports were mere chimeras. It was not until it was impossible any longer to doubt that credit was given to them. The steps that we then took, instead of disconcerting all the measures of the conspirators, as we could have done, did not interfere with the working out of any one of their plans. All liberty was left, in fact, to William to carry out his scheme. The anecdote which explains ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... I really haven't," replied Lord Launcelot, as he sat down. "It's quite annoying to have to think about such a disconcerting event, so much out of my usual ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... that he himself frequently finds no end of caterpillars, and has not the slightest difficulty at all in distinguishing them with the naked eye from the leaves and plants among which they are lurking. But observe how promptly we crush and demolish this very inconvenient and disconcerting critic. The caterpillars he finds are almost all hairy ones, very conspicuous and easy to discover—'woolly bears,' and such like common and unclean creatures—and the reason they take no pains to conceal themselves from his unobservant eyes is simply this: nobody on earth wants to discover ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... fix it, even with critical readers: and for a long time the general public turned an obstinately deaf ear. He followed The Ordeal itself—a study of very freely and deeply drawn character; of incident sometimes unusual and always unusually told; of elaborate and disconcerting epigram or rather of style saturated with epigrammatic quality; and of a strange ironic persiflage permeating thought, picture, and expression in the same way—unhastingly but unrestingly with others. Evan Harrington (1861) is generally lighter ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... would be harmful. Before I could answer her we were startled to hear quite close to us a faint cry. I got up and looked around, and so did Devaka, for she is brave, my wife. But we could not find anything to account for the disconcerting sound. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... writing. He speaks what he wants to have put into writing. Dictating is not an easily acquired accomplishment in business—as many a man will testify. Modern office practice has intensified the difficulty. It may be rather disconcerting to deliver well-constructed, meaningful sentences to an unresponsive stenographer, but at any rate the receiver is alive. But to talk into the metallic receiver of a mechanical dictaphone has an almost ridiculous air. Men have to train ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... with beauty in our happiness. The charm of the scenery which passed before our eyes became in this way an interpreter between us, for in our praises of the landscape we revealed to each other the secrets of our love. Evelina's mother sometimes took a mischievous pleasure in disconcerting her daughter. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... was ill at ease—for in them there shone the same untamed, uncontrolled ferocity that one sees in the eyes of a wild beast. His youth, his good looks, his charm made the sinister savagery hinted in the smile the more disconcerting. He poured whiskey from a bottle into each of the two tall glasses, filled them up with seltzer, extended one ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Sainte-Colombe who is here beside me. How much of her remains? Her general appearance is transformed by her clothes and the way in which she wears her hair; her voice and gestures are softer; but all this minute and complex change is but the subtle effect of events, the disconcerting effect of an influence that has laid itself upon her nature without altering it in any way. And this is what really causes my uneasiness. She is changed, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... that he would be given every opportunity to establish his innocence, but he could not rid himself of the ugly disconcerting belief that a man hunt was on, and that he, the hunted creature, was to be driven from cover to cover while the state drew its threads of testimony about him strand by strand, until they finally reached his ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... this claim set up for childish simplicity; and I cannot help thinking it fortunate and salutary for us that the Celtic poets have taken to sounding its note so boldly. Whatever else they do, on the conventional ideals of this generation they speak out with an uncompromising and highly disconcerting directness. As I said just now, they are held, if at all, by a long and loose chain to the graven images to which we stand bound arm-to-arm and foot-to-foot. They fly far enough aloof to take a bird's-eye view. What they see they declare with a boldness which is the more ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... or anywhere, when, as I have described, the call came. I have often wondered why the War Office always springs upon one with such alarming suddenness; possibly it is the way of the Army; it is certainly disconcerting, although it is educational, for it teaches one to be always ready ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester

... Although at the epoch of the declaration of war the country was destitute both of troops and money, yet from the devotion of a brave and loyal, yet unjustly calumniated people, resources sufficient for disconcerting the plans of conquest devised by a foe, at once numerous and elate with confidence, had been derived. The blood of the sons of Canada had flowed mingled with that of the brave soldiers sent for its defence, when re-inforcements were afterwards received. The multiplied proofs of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... through Pratt's defences. He was prepared to hear something unpleasant and disconcerting, but not that. And he voiced the first thought ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... Troop, was the authority for this. But when, presuming on that supposition, he claimed acquaintanceship with Cahill, the post-trader spread out his hands on the counter and stared at the sergeant with cold and disconcerting eyes. "I never kept bar nowhere," he said. "I never been on the Bowery, never been in New York, never been east of Denver in my life. What was it ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... spiritual link with America and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better men than Americans." Or this: "My mind is open, and when one says that, one generally means that it is shut." Disconcerting, very, and all to be found in Another Sheaf (HEINEMANN). Mr. GALSWORTHY'S chief object in his little book is to arouse us to the disgrace and destruction of our State and race if we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, not by our own resources, but by alien ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... a disconcerting habit of making people repeat their remarks. This is deliberate and its purpose twofold—to gain time and to ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson

... and enthusiastic acceptance of his offer was a bit disconcerting. Raish was rather sorry that he had not said five. However, to do him justice, the transaction was more or less what he would have called "chicken-feed stuff." Mr. Pulcifer was East Wellmouth's leading broker in real estate, in cranberry bog ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... advanced the arguments which had already been used with effect in England, that the oath had been extorted from the barons by force, and that on his death-bed Henry had released them from it; but more than this, Stephen's advocates suddenly sprang on their opponents a new and most disconcerting argument, one which would have had great weight in any Church court, and which attacked both their claims at once. Matilda could not be the rightful heir, and so the oath itself could not be binding, because she was of illegitimate ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... still before you. Be patient. The thought of your youth should make you happy. How glad the rest of us would be—even if one lives the life of an artist like myself—to start over again from the very beginning. Please be not ungrateful for hearing me yesterday. Spare me this disconcerting sequel. Am I to blame for your falling in love with me? You are only one of many. My manager insists on my assuming this august manner on the stage. You see there's more to it than mere singing. I simply have to play the part of Tannhaeuser that way. Now be good, my child. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... butter at wholesale prices, and grinned in a most tiresome way whenever he caught sight of Anastasia. The Rector patronised her insufferably; and though old Mr Noot was kind, he treated her like a small child, and sometimes patted her cheek, which she felt to be disconcerting at eighteen. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... that it was all right baffled Mamie. Anything less all right she had never come across in a lifetime of disconcerting experiences. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... Judith's call, Doc Tripp came without delay, left brief, disconcerting word that without the shadow of a doubt the hogs were stricken with cholera, and went on with his little bag to see what his skill ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... Beecham. He was preparing, regardless of the storm, for his usual walk about his estate. He went out, and Mrs. Beecham turned to her household duties. Miss Marjorie and Tom were alone, standing before the blazing fire in the hall. There was still that disconcerting twinkle of ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... disconcerting his pleasantly questioning look with one of swift resolve. "Dr. Kemp, I wish to tell you that my father has confided to me your ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... him to sit, and indeed had remained standing himself during their short interview. When he left the room, however, Glossin seized upon a chair, and threw himself into it with an air between embarrassment and effrontery. He felt the silence of his companions disconcerting and oppressive, and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... be sure, now that she was fairly launched on her philanthropic expedition; also the fact that the two women in the room were absolutely silent and gave no hint of how they were going to take this tide of insults was somewhat disconcerting. However, Gila was not easily disconcerted. She was very angry, and her anger had been growing in force all night. The greatest insult that man could offer her had been heaped upon her by Courtland, and there was no punishment too great to be meted out to the unfortunate ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... more disconcerting for Charles, because of the speedy abatement of the enthusiasm that had hailed his first appearance. What had happened to him was what generally happens to a conqueror who has more good luck than talent; instead of making himself a party among the great Neapolitan and Calabrian vassals, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... he made another and rather disconcerting discovery, which set him wondering afresh as to the real nature of the woman who, like himself, had been the victim ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... equivocation in this crisis, and as he gazed up into the full and peaceful shade over his head, a flood of little memories, bound tendril-like by sounds, sights, and fragrances to his heart, swept him with disconcerting violence. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... emphatic, his language unmeasured. He had been, all through his public life, surrounded by a cohort of admiring and obedient coadjutors, and he was unused to, and intolerant of, disagreement or opposition. It was a disconcerting experience to speak on a platform where he was chairman, and, just as one was warming to an impressive passage, to feel a vigorous pull at one's coat-tail, and to hear a quick, imperative voice say, in no muffled tone, "My dear fellow, are you never going to ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... interview with Miss Jasmine by apparently forgetting all about her. This had a most disconcerting ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... the next morning after my paternal interview with Sara, intending to have a frank talk with Betty and lay the foundations of a good understanding on both sides. Betty was a sharp child, with a disconcerting knack of seeing straight through grindstones; she would certainly perceive and probably resent any underhanded management. I thought it best to tell her plainly that I was going to look ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... shipmaster, soaked to the soul with the routine of his calling. It seemed to give token of some faculty held in reserve, to hint at an inner life, as it were; and not a few of the frank and simple men who went to sea with him found it disconcerting. Captains who could handle a big steamship as a cyclist manages a bicycle they had seen before; they recognized in him the supreme skill, the salt- pickled nerve, the iron endurance of a proven sailor; but there their experience ended and ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... had broken loose and was floating about. Once a fox, somewhere in the utter silence of the forest depths, barked a hoarse, sharp, malicious sound; and once, hoarser still and very hollowly, a great horned owl hooted with disconcerting suddenness. (The scream of a rabbit followed these two, but whether fox or owl had been in at that killing the wolverine never knew.) Twice a wood-hare turning now to match the whiteness of its surroundings, finicked up one of the still, silent ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... were still in touch with the world. For even here man had intruded. Hanging to the cliff were the few buildings of a small mine which sends out its ore by pack-pony. I had already begun to feel the aloofness of the quiet places, so it was rather disconcerting to have a miner with a patch over one eye come to the doorway of one of the buildings and remark that he had read some of my political articles and agreed with them ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... alone, for Mr. Dryland came out of the cottage. The curate was a big, stout man, with reddish hair, and a complexion like squashed strawberries and cream; his large, heavy face, hairless except for scanty red eyebrows, gave a disconcerting impression of nakedness. His eyes were blue and his mouth small, with the expression which young ladies, eighty years back, strove to acquire by repeating the words prune and prism. He had a fat, full voice, with unctuous modulations not entirely under his control, so that sometimes, unintentionally, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... thaw. It is easily coped with by proper waxing of the running surfaces, but the sudden sticking of the skis, which have been running well over wet snow in the open, when they get into cold powder snow under trees or in shadow, is very disconcerting. ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... battle line. These include a great number of heavy-caliber guns. Naval guns, with an extreme length of range, are being used with great skill throughout the engagement. Kept in reserve, and silent, though posted close up to the firing line, they have had a disconcerting effect, in that their fire has reached far behind the Italian lines at intervals between the attacks, firing shots at random which did little actual damage, but gave the impression of continued advance. With the front of this battle line extending now to a length of twenty-two miles, the artillery ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter mist, exhaled from the artificially watered fields below, continues to rise, takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself. And the latter persists in its regard of the dead moon, preserving still the old disconcerting smile. It becomes more and more difficult to believe that here before us is a real colossus, so surely does it seem nothing other than a dilated reflection of a thing which exists elsewhere, in some other world. And behind in the distance are the three triangular ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... his imagination had created between them something with the flavor of a friendship. He had been thinking of her so incessantly that it was disconcerting to perceive that apparently she had not been thinking of him at all. He was the doctor to her, and no more. She continued to direct Antonio, the Italian, who was opening a crate of closely packed azalea-plants, while she discussed the effect of his sedative on her mother. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... he had occupied a curious position. He was neither leader nor follower, but a great force, acting independently of other persons, and disconcerting them visibly by the unexpectedness ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... denizens of the underworld. Sometimes amongst those who would fan the embers of social discontent into a blaze that would destroy society and not infrequently in the ranks of those who would not scruple to plunder the public treasury. It has always been annoying and disconcerting to such elements to find that they could neither cajole nor frighten nor bribe these inflexible men in the uniform of scarlet and gold who stood for the administration of British law in a British country. Noblesse oblige. If the recruits of to-day measure ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... the features of this picture, however, should be painted in rose-colors. A disconcerting and persistent rumor has it that what once was a by-product of fiction—the sale of "movie rights"—is now threatening to run off with the entire production. The side show, we are warned, is shaping the policy of the main tent. Which is to say that novelists and magazine ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing

... the bounding shoe-sole the Highlander has the natural genius for. What he devised was to try musketry at long range (and to shorten my tale, that failed), then charge from his summit, over the rushy gut, and up the side of Dunchuach, disconcerting our aim and bringing his men ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... and the chief of the detective service was about to take his leave, when a really disconcerting thing happened. Mme. Real went up to the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... the woods, and there is ever a mischievous, bantering, half-ironical undertone in her lay, as if she were conscious of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster. Ambitious of song, practicing and rehearsing in private, she yet seems the least sincere and genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if she had taken up music only to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the robins ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... They evidently had been told of his strange madness in refusing to occupy the berth he had paid for. Their examination of his effects was more thorough than usual. It may have entered their heads that he was standing guard over the repose of a fair accomplice. They asked so many embarrassing and disconcerting questions that he was devoutly relieved when they ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... borne when it is not monotonous; but he remembers that there is no limit to the time during which one human being may impel him along an open road, and he also remembers some very pretty friskings, delightful to himself, but disconcerting to his rider, and he ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... through, had he instantly followed up the advantage. But the moonlight on Alice's face struck his eyes, and by that indirect ray of vision which is often strangely effective, he recognized her lying there. It was a disconcerting thing for him, but he rallied instantly and sprang aside, taking a new position just in time to face Father Beret again. A chill crept up his back. The horror which he could not shake off enraged him beyond measure. Gathering fresh energy, he renewed the assault with desperate ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... silence whose length would have been disconcerting to any other than an old-timer owning a knowledge of the Indian ways, Cochise called a squaw, who picked up the firearms at his bidding and took them away with her. Then these two men of parts settled down to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... then that Washington resolved on making one of those sudden movements so disconcerting to a self-confident enemy. It had been some time maturing, but could not be sooner put in execution on account of the wretched condition of Sullivan's (lately Lee's) troops, who had come off their long march, as Washington expresses ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... say the least, disconcerting. His clothes were badly torn and frayed; his linen sack hung from his shoulders like a herald's apron; one of his hands was bandaged; his face scratched; and there was no hat on his dishevelled head. To add ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. The ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... It was disconcerting to find any one there, and for the moment he was ready to draw back. But, on the other hand, it might be a spy of the enemy, who had crept up there to watch their proceedings; and under these circumstances, Fred felt ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... of all expectation and all reason, have exploded into space. You have developed in an incredibly short space of time. But even that isn't the most disconcerting item of your development. As an Earthling, you have heard of the details of the first expedition of your people into space, ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... the next Congressional term with no delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade, arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of their astonishment, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... had in her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to a person with whom she had never been intimate. It is very complex, but possible, for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways. If this were so, the case which would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion; and the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved, would ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... said. "Do not speak to the man at the wheel, and, above all, refrain from disconcerting the beer—— I mean seer. What do I see? A man—let him pass for a man—in motion. He moves. Yes," I said excitedly, "yes, it is a stable. The man moves across the stable. Lo, he leads forth a horse. There now." I turned to her triumphantly. "The horse you fancy, madam, will also ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... a disconcerting habit of appealing to anybody near for confirmation of any opinion she expressed, and this was annoying to Miss Lucy. She considered it distinctly ill-bred, and whatever was ill-bred was disagreeable to her. She was very glad that she had reached the big marble steps which led up to her ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... Japanese down as he dropped from the tree, that was his plan. But meantime, where was the other Japanese? Was he among the near shadows? If so, he might even now be creeping stealthily toward Orme. The likelihood of such an attack was disconcerting to think of. But as Orme was wondering about it, it occurred to him that the man in the tree would not have gone on guard so quickly, if his confederate were near at hand. It was natural that he should have put ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... turned more fully towards them, and for a moment Geoffrey stood still in blank astonishment. The average man would find it disconcerting to be brought, without warning, suddenly face to face in a strange country with a woman who had discarded him, and Thurston showed ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... awoke as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the bell would jam or a brake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the loose and rattling chain would jump the cogs of the chain-wheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrous stop without at the same time arresting the forward momentum ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... out in mid-November by way of Orgon [Aix], Brignolles and le Muy, striking the Mediterranean at Frejus. En route he was inveigled into a controversy of unwonted bitterness with an innkeeper at le Muy. The scene is conjured up for us with an almost disconcerting actuality; no single detail of the author's discomfiture is omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in its impersonal detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On crossing the Var, the sunny climate, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... had gone on so long that he had got into a groove, and the prospect of change was disconcerting. Christina and he had got on, he thought to himself, very nicely for a great number of years; why—why—why should they not continue to go on as they were doing now for the rest of their lives? But there was ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... of relief, but her purse remained open, and she waited, regarding Tisdale with an expectant, disconcerting side-glance of her half-veiled eyes. "And the day rates for the use of the team?" ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... Dorn went on, "we'd find thoughts and inclinations coming into our minds we'd never wanted there. It was an eerie experience—though personally I found it even more disconcerting to awaken in the morning and discover that my attitudes had changed in some particular or other, and as a ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz

... which Robert every now and again blew a mournful blast, was confusing when it arrived in the midst of an idea; and a little curved thing (like the hunting-horn of old pictures) into which the chauffeur occasionally mewed, was as disconcerting to my nerves as to those of the pedestrians who hopped out ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... hour Mahony aired his heels in front of a public-house. Then he gave it up, and went on his way. But his pleasure was damped: the inconsiderateness with which Purdy could shake him off, always had a disconcerting effect on him. To face the matter squarely: the friendship between them did not mean as much to Purdy as to him; the sudden impulse that had made the boy relinquish a promising clerkship to emigrate in his wake—into this he had ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... I think," she said with disconcerting detachment. "At first I was afraid you didn't like nonsense, but you really got through very well, considering the trouble I caused you. But I'm in trouble myself now. Papa will land to-morrow. He's the grandest, dearest man in all this world, but when he finds that I'm going to act in Mr. Searles's ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... vicious; nobody loves them. But those who hobnob with us here are fed, like our Army, on Army rations, together with more than their share of private luxuries, and consequently are stout and contented-looking, and display none of the ill-bred and disconcerting haste of the hereditary fugitive of our drains and cellars. If you happen to stand still and silent for a few moments, you will hear some cheery old rascal come sniffing and grunting along the parapet, not so much in search of food as to enjoy the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... hands fell from the arm of the chair to her lap, though her big soft eyes never changed their gaze, which proved somewhat disconcerting to the older woman who had the grace to color slightly. Peggy then ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of sunlight must be thrown. Dinkie, since he has stepped into his first experience in the keeping of rabbits, has been asking me a number of rather disconcerting questions. His father, I notice, has the habit of half-diffidently referring the boy to me, just as I nursed the earlier habit of referring him to his father. But some time soon Dinkie and I will have to have a serious talk about this thing called Life, this Life ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... girl. Perhaps she found that steady, unwinking regard of his disconcerting, for she turned her head away slightly so that her eyes were hidden from him. But the soft profile of the young face stood clear against the darkening sky, and ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... who is truly original cannot comment on boot-laces without illustrating his philosophy and consolidating his position. Noting in myself that a regular contemplation of these pictures inspires a weariness of all other pictures that are not absolutely first rate, giving them a disconcerting affinity to the tops of chocolate-boxes or to "art" photographs, I have permitted myself to suspect that supposing some writer were to come along and do in words what these men have done in paint, I ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... faultless friend, Mr. Radley, of the Adelphi Hotel - are peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea-change; or whether a plain mutton-chop, and a glass or two of sherry, would be less likely of conversion into foreign and disconcerting material. My own opinion is, that whether one is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a sea-voyage, is a matter of little consequence; and that, to use a common phrase, 'it comes to very much the same thing in the end.' Be this as it may, I know ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence at my own solicitation. I instinctively charged Eleanor with this reversal of the situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a something about Mrs. Fontage ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... Strzygowski, from the end of that century dates the beautiful church of Kodja-Kalessi in Isauria. The century in which the East finally dominated the West (350-450) is a period of incubation. It is a time of disconcerting activity that precedes the unmistakable launch of art upon the Christian slope. I would confidently assert that every artistic birth is preceded by a period of uneasy gestation in which the unborn child ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... then under the Captain's own supervision. He asserted them to be beautiful, and his acquaintances were content with the qualification that to an unwarned visitor, in an uncertain light, they might be disconcerting. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... words in evident distress. Bertie's face had grown quite serious, even stern. He was looking at her with a directness which for the first time in their acquaintance she found disconcerting. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... she with a dry laugh that was highly disconcerting to him. "I certainly have no fortune—or hope of one, so far as ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... long residence in Paris has made me more critical than I used to be in such matters; but I do not remember having met any woman in society with manners more nearly perfect than Mrs. Courtney's. Ethel Leigh used to be, upon occasion, painfully abrupt and disconcerting; and her movements and attitudes, though there was abundant native grace in them, were often careless and unconventional. Of course, I do not forget that niceties of deportment, without sound qualities of mind and heart to back them, are of trifling value; but the ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... bed with a suddenness that was almost disconcerting. Thus deserted, Mr. Truefitt finished his whiskey and water and, his head full of plans for the betterment of everybody connected with him, blew out ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs

... we been sent Indian Divisions for Suvla and if the New Army, Territorials and Yeomen had been sent instead to France! Each category would have given (let me put it mildly) double value. The heat, the thirst, the scrub, the snipers, all so disconcerting to our fresh contingents would have been commonplaces of frontier warfare to our Indian troops. See what the handful with us here have achieved. Yet in vain do I write and cable my personal entreaties to Beauchamp Duff, the all-powerful Commander-in-Chief in India, and a very old friend, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... when I heard noises above. Graham was up in a minute, thrust on his clothes, and hastened, lantern in hand, up the ladder into the loft where he found a poor rat caught in a trap. We will leave the rest. This sort of thing is just a little disconcerting as you are getting off to sleep. Another night he was catching the wood-lice creeping over our bedroom walls, and must have caught fifty. I am rather thankful when he is too tired for these raids. The houses are ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... variety in the faces I met along the trail, and they did not seem as unfamiliar to me as I had expected. I was constantly surprised by resemblances to types and individuals at home. One of my chair coolies, for example, a young, smooth-faced fellow, bore a disconcerting likeness to one of my former students. But fair or dark, fine-featured or foul, all greeted me in a friendly way, generally stopping after I had passed to ask my coolies more about me. My four-bearer chair testified to my standing, and my men, Eastern fashion, glorified themselves in glorifying ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... kept so low for the first forty or fifty yards that it is practically impossible for the wind to take it off the line, for it must be remembered that even when the wind comes dead from the front, if there is the slightest slice or pull on the ball to start with, it will be increased to a disconcerting extent before the breeze has done ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... for reasons of her own, the Queen had seen fit to look into Malone's mind. She'd found him worrying, and called him about it. It was, Malone thought, sweet of her in a way. But it was also just a bit disconcerting. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... of her delightful cities; and she had only to wait till the twelfth hour to gather its first fruits. There was no longer any compact, any written bond, signed by the hands of kings or peoples, that could involve her destiny. But now, at the spectacle, unforeseen and daily more abominable and disconcerting, of the barbarian invasion, words half-effaced and secret treaties written by unknown hands on the souls and consciences of all men revealed themselves and slowly gathered life and radiance. To some extent I was a witness of these things; ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... they did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality. I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness; sometimes only one, larger it might be than that ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... 24th General Sherman made an attack for the purpose of carrying the north end of Missionary Ridge. His success was not complete, although at the time it was reported throughout the army to be so. It had the effect of disconcerting Bragg, however, and caused him to strengthen his right by withdrawing troops from his left, which circumstance led Hooker to advance on the northerly face of Lookout Mountain. At first, with good glasses, we could plainly see Hooker's troops driving the Confederates up the face of the mountain. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... destined to a fall. From a tall mountaineer in the ranks came, in words not intended for his ears, but plainly audible, the disconcerting words,— ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... visiting neighbor answered in response to his forcedly cordial greeting. If a man has walked a mile and a half with a picture of a woman handing him a glass of cool milk with a certain lift of black lashes from over deep, black blue eyes it is—disconcerting to have her do it in ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... had ever seen. More than a mile in length, but quite narrow, it lay on the seashore—a lake of deep fresh water, with nothing between it and the sea but a bank of sand, up which the great waves came rolling in southwesterly winds, one now and then toppling over—to the disconcerting no doubt of the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... and continue drinking. So I decided to stop drinking and keep sound. I noticed that a good many men of the same age as myself and the same habits as myself were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. A number of them blew up with various disconcerting maladies and a number more died. Soon after I was forty years of age I noticed I began to go to funerals oftener than I had been doing—funerals of men between forty and forty-five I had known socially and convivially; that these funerals occurred quite regularly, and that the ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe

... irreverent as "Barking" Thompson, a nickname bestowed because of his peculiar habit of gradually puffing up, like a frog, under religious excitement, and then bursting forth in an inarticulate shout, disconcerting to the uninitiated. During Baxter's speech and the singing of the hymn his expansive red cheeks had been distended like balloons, and his breath came shorter and shorter. Mr. Perley had arisen and was holding up his hand for silence, when with one terrific "Boo!" "Barking" ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... tell Janet. In that abode of joyful and successful propriety the words would not form themselves. And the argument that she was not to blame carried no weight whatever. She—she, Hilda—lacked courage to be candid.... This was extremely disconcerting to her self-esteem.... And even with Edwin Clayhanger she wished to temporize. She longed for nothing so much as to see him; and yet she feared to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... seemed an interminable wait, the portieres parted and the girl stepped into the room. In her hand she carried a carefully folded newspaper. She crossed to the table and, regarding the man with a cold, disconcerting stare, waited ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... live a life of freedom in a corner by ourselves," she continued with a disconcerting change of metre into which I could not hope to follow her. But her words gave me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... entered. Each, it appeared, had his own opinion, which differed from that of the others; and when, in order to settle the question, they decided to search for their own footprints as a guide, they made the disconcerting discovery that the imprints were altogether too faint to be traceable by such comparatively inexperienced trackers as themselves. Furthermore, although before entering this open space it had appeared to them that they had been following a tolerably ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... the crews marooned there by far-sighted skippers who calculated on thus securing them against their return from Bristol, outward bound. The gangs as a rule gave this little Heligoland a wide berth, and when carried thither against their will they had a disconcerting habit of running away with the press-boat, and of thus marooning their commanding officer, that contributed not a little to the immunity the island enjoyed. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... spoken to in neighborly greeting. We grunted indifferently in reply, as an unsociable man might. When, as sometimes happened, people rose up in front of us from gateways or hidden roads, it was very disconcerting. On such occasions only the darkness saved us, for we took no chances, wherever there ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... round to the front a disconcerting thought struck me. I remembered that I had only a few ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution before the Senate." This opening sentence was a piece of consummate art. The simple and appropriate image, the low voice, the calm manner, relieved the strained excitement of the audience, which might have ended by disconcerting the speaker if it had been maintained. Every one was now at his ease; and when the monotonous reading of the resolution ceased Mr. Webster was master of the situation, and had his listeners in complete control. With breathless attention they followed him as ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... might be called a major surgeon in football, for it is a matter of record that he has been called back to Yale, not when the patient was merely sick, but in a serious condition. Usually the operation has been performed with such skill that the patient has rallied with disconcerting suddenness. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... announced after a disconcerting pause, and Katharine flushed deeply at the accusation, realizing that it was not polite to rebuke your hostess's brother and regretting her ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... particular Yankee in the way of business, but I lingered occasionally by his door in the cool of the afternoon, just to feed my eyes on his brawn and my ears on his homely and pleasant nasality. Stires's eyes were that disconcerting gray-blue which seems to prevail among men who have lived much in the desert or on the open sea. You find it in Arizona; and in the navies of all the northern countries. It added to his cowboy look. I knew nothing about Stires—remember that on Naapu ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... have given of the dry humour of old clerks, which is sometimes rather disconcerting. A stranger was taking the duty in a church, and after service made a few remarks about the weather, asserting that it promised to be a fine day for the haymaking to-morrow. "Ah, sir," replied the clerk, "they do say that the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... regard to scenery what Lessing says of pictures, we only see in both what we bring with us to the view. More disconcerting than the importunities of beggars and donkey-drivers are the supercilious remarks of tourists. To most, of course, the whole thing is "a sad disappointment." Everything must necessarily be a disappointment to some beholders; and with critics of a certain order, the mere ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this country-it is so much like home. Of course, there are many wide districts exotic enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the rivers, the bamboo forests, the great tangled forests themselves, the banana groves down the aisles of which dance savages with shields-but ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... venturing a glance now and then to delight myself without disconcerting that gentle lady, when I felt Annora's hand on my arm, squeezing so hard, poor maid, that her fingers left a purple mark there, and though she did not speak, I beheld, as it were, darts and arrows in ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... resembling a hostile periscope. In order to economize her fuel supply her speed was reduced to 10 knots. It was then that her bad qualities showed themselves. With her shallow draught and high freeboard she rolled like a barrel, since speed was essential to impart steadiness. The motion was certainly disconcerting, although it did not imply that the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman



Words linked to "Disconcerting" :   displeasing, upsetting



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