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Furtive   /fˈərtɪv/   Listen
Furtive

adjective
1.
Marked by quiet and caution and secrecy; taking pains to avoid being observed.  Synonyms: sneak, sneaky, stealthy, surreptitious.  "A sneak attack" , "Stealthy footsteps" , "A surreptitious glance at his watch"
2.
Secret and sly or sordid.  Synonyms: backstair, backstairs.  "His low backstairs cunning" , "Backstairs intimacies" , "Furtive behavior"



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"Furtive" Quotes from Famous Books



... light thrill passed through her: she wore a sort of half-furtive, guilty look, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... approaching, minister'd the bath To her own King, and at first touch discern'd That token, by a bright-tusk'd boar of old Impress'd, what time he to Parnassus went 490 To visit there Autolycus and his sons, His mother's noble sire, who all mankind In furtive arts and fraudful oaths excell'd.[83] For such endowments he by gift receiv'd From Hermes' self, to whom the thighs of kids He offer'd and of lambs, and, in return, The watchful Hermes never left his side. Autolycus arriving in the isle Of pleasant Ithaca, the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... don't matter." Tony is right, I believe. Most of the impropriety I used to hear at school, university, and in the smoking room, though often little but a reaction against silly conventions, a tilt against whited sepulchres,—was well-named smut. It was furtive, a distortion of life's facts and inimical therefore to life. Impropriety here, on the other hand, is a recognition of life's facts, an expression of life, a ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... reading the letters which she had found in the morning at the St. Malo post-office, and which she had not opened in the boat, loaded with passengers. At once, after breakfast, she had closeted herself in her room, and there, her letters unfolded on her knees, she relished hastily her furtive joy. She was to drive at two o'clock on the mall with her father, her husband, the Princess Seniavine; Madame Berthier-d'Eyzelles, the wife of the Deputy, and Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician. She had two letters that day. The first one she read exhaled a tender aroma of love. Jacques ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... women there comes a moment when they comprehend their destiny,—when their hitherto mute organization speaks peremptorily. It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive involuntary glance, who awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener it is some unexpected sight, the aspect of scenery, the coup d'oeil of religious pomp, the harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn veiled in slight mists, the winning notes of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... by the maid, Fownes entered. He took a quick, almost furtive, survey of the room, then glanced in succession at each of those seated about the table, till his eyes rested on Janice. There they fixed themselves in a bold, unconcealed scrutiny, to the no small embarrassment ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... every step—"What would Sara say to this?" It was a tyranny—if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had passed the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her, after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend riding with ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... change even more apparent. Gray hairs, a bowed form, a furrowed face, and that sort of furtive wildness which characterizes the man long hunted by his enemies, had taken the place of his former unfearing, bull-fronted ruggedness. His spirit was broken. He no longer looked to the future with abounding ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... him and kiss him to her face, and was intensely amused at his embarrassed and miserable air as he suffered her caresses, though not without a stolen gesture of objection. His shyness was not unobserved by Anne's quick though furtive eyes, and she owed him a grudge for wishing to exclude ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... state. Conventions were established from the first to regulate the rights of the individual and the tribe. They were and are the rules of the game of life and must be followed if we would "play the game." Ages before man felt the need of indigestion remedies, he ate his food solitary and furtive in some corner, hoping he would not be espied by any stronger and hungrier fellow. It was a long, long time before the habit of eating in common was acquired; and it is obvious that the practise could not have been taken up with safety until the individuals ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... He whipped out his lens and a tape measure, and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long thin nose only a few inches from the planks, and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained blood-hound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law, instead of exerting them in its defense. As he hunted about, he kept muttering to himself, and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to bed. Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore sat by the centre table, the one busy with the evening paper, the other sewing, but now and then casting a furtive glance at a distant sofa, where Mr. Travilla and Elsie were seated side by side, conversing in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... that of the toiling field-hand. While he mentioned with a warm appreciation the acts of kindness which those in authority had shown to him and his people, he would speak of a cruel deed, not with the indignation of one accustomed to quick feeling and spontaneous expression, but with a furtive disapproval which suggested to us a doubt in his own mind as to whether he had a right to think or to feel, and presented to us the curious psychological spectacle of a mind enslaved long after the shackles had been struck off from the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... as he was used to refined surroundings, found his gorge rising. At some of the little tables furtive, impudent, tattered, sleek men ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... crossed the platform and took his seat beside the lady, an old woman hobbled across the track. Casting a furtive glance in the direction the ponies were taking, she hobbled ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... are frost-bound meetings, and reproach At parting, furtive snatches full of fear; Love grown a pain; we bleed to kiss, and kiss Because we bleed for love; the time doth broach Shame, and shame teareth at us till we tear Our hearts to shreds—yet wilder ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... Hermitage, which even in a reproduction loudly proclaims its originality.[33] This is by no means identical in design with the Naples picture, but appears much less studied, much more directly taken from the life. The astute Farnese Pope has here the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful look, as in the great unfinished group now to be described.[34] This Titian, which doubtless passed into the Hermitage with the rest of the Barbarigo pictures, may have been the first foundation for the series of portraits of the Farnese Pope, and ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... connection with the Mocenighi, would undoubtedly have given to the world a poem or a drama on the fate of our philosopher. Giovanni Mocenigo was a man verging on middle life, superstitious, acknowledging the dominion of his priest, but alive in a furtive way to perilous ideas. Morally, he stands before us as a twofold traitor: a traitor to his Church, so long as he hoped to gain illicit power by magic arts; a traitor to his guest, so soon as he discovered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... one is waiting for the curtain to rise, particularly when it is twenty minutes late in going up as it was at a certain theatre the other evening. People behind one have a horrible advantage. One knows that they can hear everything you say, unless you whisper it in a furtive manner, which makes them suspect things far worse than any one would be likely to say in a Philadelphia theatre, except, of course, on the stage. The fact that you know they can overhear you, and intend to do so, leads one on to make ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... tried to think. It was past eleven. The housekeeper had gone to spend the night with an ailing sister, and a furtive glance at Brother Burge's small shifty eyes and fat unwholesome face was sufficient to deter him from leaving him alone with his property, while he went to ask the police to give an eye to his house for the night. Besides, it was more than probable that Mr. Burge ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... for your own sake? Don't put it that way, sweetheart." He took her hand; but, casting a furtive glance at the backs of the few other passengers in the car, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... had been making a few lines in a small pocket sketch-book, with a furtive glance or two at Florida. When they returned to the boat, he busied himself again with the book, and presently he ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... blue eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes. * * * He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye until he saw that she had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... gait, casting furtive glances to right, to left, before and behind—at intervals stopping to listen—Helen Armstrong continues her nocturnal excursion. Notwithstanding the obscurity, she keeps in a direct course, as if to reach some particular point, and ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... shouted down a challenge presently in round English at a party who clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it as if they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultan himself. There was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepit door, nor anything meek. Accordingly I couched the challenge in terms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until the leader of the new arrivals chose ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... her again on our furtive way among the shadows. She was swift and sure, and made good time. She knew where she was going. It was a broad open space deep within the city. On three sides were wide closed doors like hangar doors. The fourth ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... and no one had moved except the little boy. With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... She had always understood that both the parents of James were dead. The lawyer had denied knowing the man whose life he had saved. And yet she had been sure of the words and of a furtive, frightened look on the face of James. According to the story of the Herald the father of Jefferson, a former convict, was named Robert. But once, when she had made some allusion to it Captain Chunn had exploded into vigorous denial. It ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... that growth was hidden and furtive, but for that reason only the more dangerous. The riders had failed to free Sam Opdyke, and Sam was in prison—but the riders were not through. It pleased them to remain deceptively quiet just now but their meetings, held in secret places, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... returned to his private office, pausing by the rack in the passage to draw from the tail pocket of his frock-coat there a folded copy of The Western Morning News. There was something furtive in his action: he would have started guiltily had he been surprised in it, even by the ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... Meanwhile, like furtive inhabitants of an infamous underworld, we remained hidden in our lairs in the daytime, waiting for night when we could creep out of our holes and go about our business under cover of darkness. Sleep is a luxury indulged in but rarely in the first-line trenches. ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... In a furtive way he kept looking about for women, hungering to see their faces. "What are they up to? I'd like to find out," his mind seemed ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... but her plans are undecided—at any rate six days—"Will 'Mr.' make a reduction?" "Mr." however, continues his manuscript, oh ever so long! and smiles; his smile is worse than his bite! I, the Habitue, approach "Mr." with a furtive clandestine air, and observe cheerily, "I hope to remain here a month." "Certainly, Sor; is better you do; will be se same as last year; I gif you se same appartement, you see."—This with an air of favour. I thank him profusely—for nothing. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various

... who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire was crashing down in smoke, and flame, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... he stepped out upon the uncarpeted floor. The sound of his footsteps upon the hardwood seemed to reverberate through the whole building. He walked a few steps on tiptoe, and then decided that in case anyone should see him, the tiptoeing would look furtive. So he walked to the foot of the stairway, his footsteps sounding in his ears like the ring of a hammer on an anvil. As he ascended the stairs he called out, "Hey, isn't there any one here? I am locked in, and can't get out! Hello! Someone ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... conservatism of little faith; yet his enthusiasm grew daily. He weighed the evidence of phenomena with an impartiality that other people pronounced belief. The attitude of those about him was for the most part unsympathetic. Some to whom he had made furtive confidences called him "spooky," a spiritualist; but he was merely an investigator, trying to be fair. It was an alluring study; perhaps he ran the risk of over-enthusiasm—he had known people who had spiritualized the palpably material—but he was guarding against this danger; ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... dogs I dare not trust myself to say much. They would follow the convoy all day long, with the furtive air characteristic of those to whom life means nothing but a constant dodging of half-bricks violently hurled; and at night they would sit around in a circle and perform the mournful operation known as baying the moon, which they did with prodigious ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... every morning when he opened the door of his bedroom; it was there when he came home late at night, and seemed to be sitting up for him, in the reproachful, feminine fashion. When he was writing his letters, there it was, with a prim, furtive air of looking on. It was not like a mere slipper; it had traits and an individuality of its own; there were moments when the jet beads in the buckle sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting at night, reading under the drop-light, Lynde ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... between the slender, nervous young woman and this burly individual was carried on in very cautious tones, accompanied by many quick and furtive glances in all directions, as if both were in fear of observers. At last, after eager pleading on one side and stolid expostulation on the other, a small package passed from the hand of the young woman into the huge paw of the man. The latter gave her a quick, cautious salute and hurried back ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... prisoners held a furtive conference among themselves, and after Cub had finished his telegraphic conversation with the Canadian amateur, the leader of the worthy quartet addressed ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... Evidently he was striving to subdue the exhortations of a desire which was seducing him into signing an untruthful statement. Finally, however, passion, as is always the way, got the upper hand; suddenly demanding pen and paper, he made out in hot haste, now and then casting furtive glances at the amphora, a direct statement to the effect that he, after frequent examinations of it, recognized and declared the sword in the Oberhof as one formerly belonging to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... out of the chalet, where they met the furtive-looking man they had seen overnight. He gave them another sidelong look, said Guten morgen surlily, and then, as it seemed to Saxe, began to put on his tail—that is to say, he strapped on his one-legged milking-stool, and went to meet one ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... other to hide their emotion, took each other's hand without further speech, and went on together awhile, till she glanced at him with furtive solicitude. "I arrived at Alfredston station last night, as you asked me to, and there was nobody to meet me! But I reached Marygreen alone, and they told me Aunt was a trifle better. I sat up with her, and as you did not come all night ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... they fell to playing games with each other quite naturally, yet not entirely forgetting his propinquity, as their occasional furtive glances at his movements showed him. He, too, became presently absorbed in his work, until it was finished and it was time for him to take it to the office of the "Informer." The wild idea seized ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... discourage the visions; we talked of how Coralie should make fame and he money; he grew enthusiastic, guttural, and severe on the Steinberg. I ordered more Steinberg, and fished for more enthusiasm. I put my purse at his disposal; he dipped his fingers deep, with an anxious furtive eagerness. The loan was made, or at least pledged, before it flashed across my brain that the money was destined for Wetter—he wanted to pay off Wetter. We were ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... as though to listen, rose to her feet, and standing back against the bed, looked down at the shadows which danced about the hem of her garment. A swift furtive glance over her shoulder and her hand stole to the crimson kimono hanging on the brass rail, whilst a jewelled cat's-eye winked cunningly among the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... some new thing to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a part of her existence ever since she could remember. None of this touched her now. A dead weight of monotony rode her hard. There was the furtive wild life of the forest, the light of sun and sky, and the banked green of the forest that masked the steep granite slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it indeed, but she could not satisfy her being with scenic ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... now! Why had they laughed—why had their attitudes and manner and the disconnected phrases in French left her flushed and rigid among the idle group at supper? Why had they suddenly seemed to remember her presence—and express their abrupt consciousness of it in such furtive signals and silence? ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... of years ago, the strained air of the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away, or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... gone out, leaving Marian at home, and, for once, had forgotten to lock the door. As soon as Aunt Jemima's back was turned, the child huddled her little pink print sun-bonnet upon her small black head, and, with one furtive glance over her shoulder towards her father's workshop, whence she could distinctly hear the quick "tap-tap" of his hammer, she opened the front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a keen glance, from her sharp little ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... Cockington and Chelston slopes, a throng of villas intermixed with the relics of ancient hedgerows. If, alighting at Torquay station, he mounts the hill above it by what in my childhood was a brambled and furtive lane, he will find on either side of him villas and villa gardens, till at length he is brought to a ridge overlooking a secluded valley. For some distance villas will still obscure his view, but presently these end. Below him he will see steep ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... shouting, horses were neighing, and hounds were baying. The townsfolk had come down to welcome their friends from the other side, but no Newnham man approached the master of Dean Tower. There was some whispering, some furtive glancing in his direction, and the Arlingham folk cut him as completely as ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... Tom have gone to bed, and both are fast asleep. Come in and get your supper; it's been waiting ever so long for you." As she spoke, the poor woman cast several furtive glances at her husband, fearing that he was more than usually morose, as he had not spoken; but, to her surprise, he ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie

... was stared at, either with open disfavour, or with well-bred, furtive criticism, and was described afterwards as being either "very American" or "very over-dressed." When she had lived in huge rooms in Fifth Avenue, Rosalie had changed her attire as many times a day as she had changed her fancy; every hour had been filled with engagements ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... it would have seemed slight indeed. She was an affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul. She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... slept the better half of the night; yet so indescribably powerful was the apprehension of derangement, that my hypocritical tongue wagged aloud at the prayers, during these furtive naps. Nay, I not only slept but dreamed. I experienced also that singular state of being, in which, while the senses are accessible to the influence of surrounding objects, the process of thought is suspended, the man seems to enjoy an inverted existence, in ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... Binat carried him off to bed and ordered him to sleep. The house shouted and sang and danced and revelled, Madame Binat moving through it with one eye on the liquor payments and the girls and the other on Dick's interests. To this latter end she smiled upon scowling and furtive Turkish officers of fellaheen regiments, and was more than kind to camel ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... gloves, he assisted in displaying, disposing of, or replacing as usual; but it was clear that his powerful understanding could no longer settle itself, as before, upon his responsible and arduous duties. Every other minute he cast a feverish furtive glance towards the door. He almost dropped, at one time, as a postman crossed from the opposite side of the street, as if to enter their shop—then passing on immediately, however, to the next door. Not a person, in short, entered the premises, whom he did not scrutinize narrowly and anxiously, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... now quite near the craters, and while we ate our rice, we heard the roaring, so that the boys grew nervous, till the joker of the company made them laugh, and then the meal absorbed their attention. Still, they occasionally sent furtive glances skyward, to see if any lava was coming ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... still; but begins with "Maupertuis," which is all we will give). "What rage animates you against Maupertuis? You accuse HIM of having published that Furtive EDITION. Know that his Copy, well sealed by him, arrived here after his death, and that he was incapable of such ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... with themselves. Behind them is a bank of flowers like those in Battersea Park, and another parallel parade, and beyond are bathing-machines. The pier completely cuts the horizon out of the background. There is a stout lady, in dark blue, bathing. The only glances directed seaward are furtive ones at her. Many seem to be doubting whether this is not what they came down for. Others lean dubiously to the invitations of the boatmen. Others again listen to vocalists and dramatic outcasts who, for ha'pence, render obvious ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... he could have believed it impossible, for it would have given him courage and lent conviction to his stand. But he knew just how fast those few remaining miles of open roadbed would be spanned. His eyes were furtive; there was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... did. She was a sweet-faced young woman, with a beautiful and well-trained contralto voice. Patty cast a furtive glance at Kit Cameron, and found that he was looking intently at the singer. She knew perfectly well he was wondering whether this might be the girl of the telephone conversations, and she saw, too, that he decided in the negative, ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... dug harder and harder into the sand, and flashed a furtive glance from under his brows at his fellow-conspirator. Then he drawled out, 'I ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... noisy talk and pretended play, to entrap some unwary customer, while the gentlemen confederates (of more villainous aspect still, in clean linen and good clothes), betrayed their close interest in the concern by the anxious furtive glance they cast on all new comers. These would be hanging on the outskirts of a wide circle of people assembled round some itinerant juggler, opposed, in his turn, by a noisy band of music, or the classic game of 'Ring the Bull,' while ventriloquists holding dialogues with wooden dolls, and fortune-telling ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... awe-inspiring than any form of full-fed rage could be. They ran in open order now, and when one happened to run unusually close to another, that other would snarl or growl, and, sometimes, even snap, with bitter, furtive, half-fearful irritability. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... three-year-old you want, there's a place in Havana called 'Casa de Beneficencia Maternidad,' where furtive-eyed damsels leave kiddies at twilight, ring the doorbell, and beat it. You might pick up one ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... (on her); in the Gomuttrika steps quivering like the brightness shown in the cloud imitating forked lightning; in the harmonious movements of her feet, having the time kept by the sound of the jewelled ornaments; with her lower lip suffused with the brightness of a furtive smile; with the mass of her locks put up again when fallen down; with her jewelled girdle-belt sounding by knocking together; with the brightness of her muslin dress, agitated as it rested on her gracefully prominent ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... come, From barren country-side and deathly slum, From bleakest wastes, from lands of aching drouth, From grape-hung valleys of the smiling South, From chains and prisons, ay, from horrid fear, (Mark you the furtive eye, the listening ear!) And all amazed and silent, scared and shy— An alien group beneath ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... rubbed an imaginary protuberance smooth with his foot, and glanced up at me again with a quick, furtive expression,—"he's got his face set in the grating of 47, and danged if a man Jack of us can get him ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle to the presence of the tongs and say, "Like it!" and cock his eye to one side or see if Roxy was observed; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glace; and finally, "Take it!"—and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the lamp or a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space and water, and thereby A ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... before the Bombay troop were in motion again. Pride forbade Gerrard and his followers to wait and see the result of the chase, and they turned their horses' heads towards Agpur, disdaining to seek more definite information than could be obtained by furtive glances backwards on the part of the rear-rank men, whose observations percolated from one to another until they reached their commander. In this way Gerrard learned that the fugitives had been caught up on, or at any rate near, the very brink of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask what error she had committed and how it might be repaired, a scratching on the door startled her. She did not, however, venture to disengage herself from the hand which now held her own, but only moved ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... curiosity, rested. If he behaved himself and made no attempt to speak to her, she was willing to declare a truce. In Rangoon the man had been drunk, but on the Irrawaddy boat he had been sober enough. Craig kept his eyes directed upon his food and did not offer her even a furtive glance. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... from her, and prepared to rise. Her eyes were very bright, but there was a curiously furtive look about them. They seemed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... a purpose, and his manners were quiet, almost furtive. He had thus early in his career gained a nickname that was peculiarly significant in Wall Street. He was known as ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... him sole monarch of the watch-fire, and—what he thought more of—a small brass kettle nearly full of brandy-and-water. This latter, I perceived, he produced when all was tranquil, and seemed, as he cast a furtive glance around, to assure himself that he was the only ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... silent, while he was being bandaged, stealing a furtive glance at Joan's face occasionally, such as an animal might that is receiving a kindness form an unexpected quarter and is gropingly trying to reconcile the act with its source. All the staff had forgotten the huzzaing army drifting ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... the quality of the tobacco Cap'n Jack continued puffing away in silence, occasionally casting furtive glances at me. The place was very silent, save for the swish of the waves, as they poured into the outer cave, and rolled the pebbles as they came. It was now past midnight, but the month being September, there would be no ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the rich and indolent brought with them ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... seemed once more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumiere. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like a reckless smuggler, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... As her furtive glance rested upon his profile he rose to leave the deck. The Countess de Coude beckoned to a passing steward. "Who is ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... upon a chair, her eyes glancing up with a little furtive anger in them as the two gentlemen entered ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... see you again!" she sighed tremorously, pressing his hand with fervour, gazing at him with furtive directness. "Are ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... salad and broke fragments of delicious crusty roll, Claire threw furtive glances across the table at the man who for the last weeks had exercised so disturbing an element in her life. Was it six weeks or two months, since she and her mother had first made his acquaintance at the tennis club at which they spent so many of ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief who feared a trap and tried ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... while the messenger was gone; and they strove when he returned with assistance; they strove with might and main, until not a man among them had the strength of a child, and the boldest of them were blanching with a fearful, furtive excitement none dared to show. A crowd had gathered round by this time—men willing and anxious to help, women suggesting new ideas and comforting the wounded man in rough, earnest style; children clinging to their ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... openly. The convention lingers that it is a little weak in a man to admit that he needs and craves woman's society, and that for a girl to admit the converse is not quite modest. And thus there is often a certain furtive element in the relations of the sexes between fifteen and twenty-five which is all of it a great pity. It is here that Mrs. Grundy has done us real injury. The poor old dear has been so fussy and nervous about it all. She has often tried to close the doors ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... a furtive glance towards Rodolphe, he saw the poet, who had come to the end of his auto-da-fe, putting quietly into his own pocket, after having tenderly kissed it, a little night cap ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... two sorts of boys develop some curious differences of habit. Where those from middle-class homes are self-possessed, those from the labourers' cottages are not merely shy, not merely uncouth and lubberly; they grow furtive, suspicious, timid as wild animals, on the watch for a chance to run. Audacious enough at bird's-nesting, sliding, tree-climbing, fighting, and impertinent enough towards people of their own kind, they quail before the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... arose and joined him at the window. Old-fashioned streets alter wonderfully after the generations of the elect have passed; but when Eastern Europe takes to dumping its furtive hordes into one, the change is marked indeed. In this one peddler's wagons replaced the shining carriages of a former day—wagons drawn by large-jointed horses and driven by bearded men who cried their wares in strange, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... sidled into the jeweler's shop with a furtive air. He handed the jeweler a ring with the stammered statement that he wished it ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... in his lean, black-clothed figure and swift furtive movements which was like some cruel and cunning animal. He stole along under shadow of the stunted trees and withies, with bent body and gliding gait, so that from Bridgewater it would be no easy matter for the most keen-sighted to see him. Indeed, he was so far from ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... servants while I still lived at the dressmaker's in Oxford Street, and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took me into keeping. But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration. All the eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content with a furtive look thrown over a stranger's shoulder. At Barnet races, the year before they sent me across the sea, we were followed by a crowd the livelong day; and truly Jack, in his blue satin waistcoat laced ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... laggingly, with bent head. When he met other wayfarers or was passed by them, he did not lift his face, but only glanced up under his eyebrows with a furtive look that was replaced by a sort of shamed relief when they had passed on without recognizing him. Some of them he knew for friends of the old time. Ten years had not changed them as he had been changed. They had spent those ten years in freedom and good repute, under God's blue sky, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... with a face full of virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the center of his forehead among the black hair, giving him an old appearance." He sought earnestly and sedulously for the secret meaning of life. He tried to reach and unravel its symbols and allegories; he tried to interpret the furtive gestures which he beheld in the shadows, and he passed into deeper shadows and more oppressive silences through the ghastly gates of suicide, while his idiotic sister remained to chatter and grimace. Jaconda remained gibbering ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... several weeks; then it came out feebly, two small advertisements occupying the whole of the fourth page. It was breathing its last. The editor was a clay-colored gentleman with a goatee, whose one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of disposition and a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the outstanding subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just mentioned, and, thoughtfully neglecting several items on the other side of the ledger, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... understanding the proof." They "cannot investigate; they may remember." She warns the girls whom she is addressing that if they will steal knowledge, they must learn, like the Spartan youths, to hide their furtive gains. "The thefts of knowledge in our sex are only connived at while carefully concealed, and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... published by Queen Hortense bear witness to that fact. Roland watched these expressions of the soul on his general's face. But toward the close of the letter Bonaparte's face clouded; he frowned and cast a furtive glance at Roland. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... know, Captain Jim, I never like walking with a lantern. I have always the strangest feeling that just outside the circle of light, just over its edge in the darkness, I am surrounded by a ring of furtive, sinister things, watching me from the shadows with hostile eyes. I've had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason? I never feel like that when I'm really in the darkness—when it is close all around ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... generations—all these fragmentary messages from out of the past emphasize the greatness of their time. They show its modernity, its nearness to our own days. They are now hazy reminiscences, as it were, by a middle-aged man of the hopes and the joys of his own youth. These furtive fragments—whatever they are—now tell us a story so full and so rich, they wield so marvelous a power, no man laying claim to possessing any intelligence may pass them without intensely feeling the eternal pathetic appeal to our hearts ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... the yeoman delves All night long, all night long; None but the peering, furtive elves See his toil and hear his song; Merrily ever the cavern rings As merrily ever his pick he swings, And merrily ever this song he sings: "Gold, gold! ever more gold,— Bright red ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... such priests as these—and I should say such priests form a full half of the North Italian priesthood—are perfectly free from that bad furtive expression which we associate with priestcraft, and which, when seen, cannot be mistaken: their faces are those of our own best English country clergy, with perhaps a trifle less flesh about them and a trifle more of a ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... eagerly but furtively reading the evening papers, of which Ernest is sitting complacently but furtively on an endless number, and doling them out as called for. Note the frequent use of the word 'furtive.' It implies that they do not wish to be discovered by their butler, say, at their otherwise ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... long time gone. The dome of pines took on an uncanny stillness; the moving patches of sun seemed furtive and unnatural; the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The under-note of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... his atmosphere of deadly peril. He volplaned, he looped the loop. His behaviour was unsurpassable. For his case, if you like, was desperate. I tell you he had seen the effect of his Tudor hall and drawing-room. He had been watching; and nothing, not a murmur, or a furtive snigger, not the quiver of an eyelash, had escaped him. And consider what it meant to him. In a furious climax of expenditure he had achieved the arresting spectacle of his house in Mayfair, and his first night, his house-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph for ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... dark man, stern of face, and with strange, furtive eyes, concealed behind long lashes and overhanging brows. Yet he was most gracious to Du L'Hut, and when he turned, and perceived Monsieur Cassion next in line, smiled and ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... in thy still sleep; All the night waits thee, yet thou still dream'st on. Furtive the shadows that about thee creep, And cheat the shining footsteps of the moon: Unseal thine eyes, it is my heart that sings, And ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... side, her dark eyes seeking the ground, and half hidden by the droop of their long-fringed lids. Indeed, she was too timid to flash their open searching light, as was her wont, into the face of Matt; and when she did look at him, as at times she was forced to, the glance was furtive and the gaze unsteady. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... or even to watch the visitor in his process of selection. I noticed one gentleman with a packet of letters, I should think considerably over a hundred, every now and then slip one into his breast pocket and give a furtive glance, which did not inspire confidence, but probably this is a well accustomed habit of the people, and the letters, perhaps, are as safe as the newspapers I frequently saw deposited on the tops of the street letter boxes (outside the boxes), because they were too ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett

... man, with a furtive glance at David's kindly face, "the risk you run from the men who live in such places if you ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne

... we could, we went to an upper window to watch for the enemy. Presently the procession began, a straggling procession of the dirtiest, meanest-looking ruffians ever seen. There was waggon after waggon, swarming with ragamuffins of both sexes and all ages. The men were mostly on foot, casting furtive glances to right and left, evident snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing evil-looking knives by their sides. During their transit the village had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's ride. When we all ventured forth again the talk was ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... and filled the carriage, to the exclusion of little Mr. Bouncer, who, nevertheless, bore this temporary and unavoidable separation with a tranquil mind, inasmuch as it enabled him to ride in a second-class carriage, where he could the more conveniently indulge in the furtive pleasures of the Virginian weed. But, to keep up his connection with the party, and to prove that his interest in them could not be diminished by a brief and enforced absence, Mr. Bouncer paid them flying visits at every station, keeping his pipe alight by a ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... and maimed, as if they were inanimate objects. They were kept by speculation out of the civil law, and out of the religious law. Property, family, marriage, all was forbidden to them. Care was taken to degrade them below men, to preserve the right of treating them as brutes. If some unions furtive, or favoured by cupidity, were formed amongst them, the wife and children belonged to the master. They were sold separately, without any regard to the ties of nature, all the attachments with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies were ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... bustle at the different headquarters, the stir amongst the signalers, the frantic pipings of the telephone "buzzers," the sharp calls. "Take a message. Ready? Brigade H.Q. to O.C. Such-and-such Battery," or "to O.C. So-and-So Regiment"; imagine the furtive scurry in the trenches to man the parapets, and prepare bombs, and lay out more ammunition; the rush at the batteries, the quick consulting of squared maps, the bellowed string of orders in a jargon of angles of sight, correctors, ranges, figures and measures ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... we were to make our start, the guide who was "well acquainted with the mountains" turned up—as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... thin hair, worn on the shoulders, was dust-colour mixed with grey, and to crown all there was a rusty rimless hat, shaped like an inverted flowerpot. From beneath this strange hat the small strange face, with the round, furtive, troubled eyes, watched ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... casting a furtive glance behind him, to make sure that no one from Garthowen was following in his footsteps, "Morva, lass, where hast come from? I will begin to think thou art one of the spirits thy mother says she sees. I thought thee wast busy ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... came up the staircase with a furtive, soft-footed tread was quite unknown to Tommy. He was obviously of the very dregs of society. The low beetling brows, and the criminal jaw, the bestiality of the whole countenance were new to the young man, though he was a ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... the human race would be nearer, by the veriest fraction of a millimetre, to universal liberty, equality, and prosperity, through his insignificant death? Modesty, and a natural instinct of self-preservation alike answered, "never a jot." Whereupon with pertinacious, if furtive, activity he sought means of escape. And, at length, after months of hiding and anxious flitting, found them in the shape of a doubtfully seaworthy, and undoubtedly filthy, fishing-smack bound from Le Havre to whatever port it could make on the English south coast. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... his outbreak, which made the savages clutch their weapons and glare at him in mingled suspicion and amazement, there proceeded a furtive ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... somewhat large when it was open, showed the most brilliant teeth I have ever beheld. But there was something about her eyes, bright as they were, which made us children afraid; they were so restless, so furtive; I could not at that time tell why, but I felt as if there was cruelty in her eye; and when she beckoned us to come to her, we approached her with fear and trembling. Still she was beautiful, very beautiful. She spoke kindly to my brother and myself, patted our heads and caressed ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... do nothing to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat Spanish mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in the tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to themselves, or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both older and younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats, though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and more ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... parlor timidly and cast furtive glances to see what Vankin was doing. Vankin stood near the piano and, deftly bending down, whispered something to the inspector's ...
— The Slanderer - 1901 • Anton Chekhov

... With a gesture which was more expressive than many words, Blount turned short upon the furtive watcher in the chair at the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... in the middle of a bar, and presently Fenn saw a figure sidling towards him in what struck him as a particularly furtive manner. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... To his deep disgust he had to wait a few hours in London on his way to more civilised parts, and fate led him idling to Brownhill's. He flattened his Celtic nose on the window and stared fascinated at the array of super-pipes displayed there. After a furtive glance along the street he crept into the temple. A white-coated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... sacrifice to the God of the Jews. But there was one he could not part with—a copy of the lovely Venus of Alcamenes which his mother had sent to him. He concealed her in a closet, contenting himself with a furtive glance at her now and then. He set up in his fancy a giant of benevolent face, and humbly sought his favor. Still he ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller



Words linked to "Furtive" :   concealed, covert



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