Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Impersonation   /ˌɪmpərsənˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Impersonation

noun
1.
A representation of a person that is exaggerated for comic effect.  Synonyms: caricature, imitation.
2.
Pretending to be another person.  Synonym: imposture.
3.
Imitating the mannerisms of another person.  Synonym: personation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Impersonation" Quotes from Famous Books



... at night! They have been a great influence in my life, I am sure; for I can remember them so far back—long before I was six at least, for we left the house in which I remember listening to them times without number when I was six. And in those days the storm had for me a perfect impersonation, as durable and unvarying as any heathen deity. I always heard it, as a horseman riding past with his cloak about his head, and somehow always carried away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet once more, ad ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination, and there is not a syllable about sex—though "ethereal mildness," which is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven and earth must love. Never to our taste—but our taste is inferior to our feeling and our genius—though you will seldom go far wrong even ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... despite the praise the fair ones gave of my impersonation of 'The Fashionable Lover,' that I am not so good an actor as either Garrick or Barry. I forget, and I lose my temper. So, a bond-servant should cut his throat," he continued, as he swung lightly into the saddle. "I fear 't is the only way I can go undiscovered. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... of his family, and with what reason, too, for we all felt it with him; his wife so beautiful, so good, so in all respects fitted to make home happy, with her never-failing sunshine and light-heartedness; his two little girls, our impersonation of cherubs; and the youngest a noble boy, so dear to his mother's heart. Oh! how many attractions within that ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... exclude certain valuable advantages. The fact that they perform their functions well, such as they are, leaves the fundamental vice or defect of these functions just where it was. If any one really thinks that the current theology involves depraved notions of the supreme impersonation of good, restricts and narrows the intelligence, misdirects the religious imagination, and has become powerless to guide conduct, then how does the circumstance that it happens not to be wholly and unredeemedly ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... at her thus, in her beautiful stillness and calm,—two men, the younger of us full-grown and conscious of many experiences, the other an old man,—before this impersonation of tender youth. At length he said, with a slight tremulousness in his voice, "Does nothing suggest to you ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... copying &c v.; transcription; repetition, duplication, reduplication; quotation; reproduction; mimeograph, xerox, facsimile; reprint, offprint. mockery, mimicry; simulation, impersonation, personation; representation &c 554; semblance; copy &c 21; assimilation. paraphrase, parody, take-off, lampoon, caricature &c 21. plagiarism; forgery, counterfeit &c (falsehood) 544; celluloid. imitator, echo, cuckoo^, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the Tenderloin station, where we'll lodge this gentleman for the night. No use to disturb Mrs. Magnus till morning," he added, with a glance at the gloomy house. "Then we'll have Jemmy give us a special performance of his impersonation of the ghost of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... Trimalchio was just about drunk. "Why hasn't one of you asked my Fortunata to dance?" he demanded, "There's no one can do a better cancan, believe me," and he himself raised his arms above his head and favored us with an impersonation of Syrus the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... orthodox fashion—Mr. Hastings leading out the fashionable Boston stranger, Mrs. De Witt, and Pliny following with her elegant daughter. All traces of last night's dissipation had been carefully petted and smoothed away from the young man's face and dress, and he looked the very impersonation of refined manhood. As for Dora no amount of care and anxiety on her mother's part could transform her into a fashionable young lady—no amount of persuasion could induce her to follow fashion's freaks in the matter of dress, unless they chanced to ...
— Three People • Pansy

... mind is whole;" he may be called the pure Idea (as subjective) uttering the Idea (as objective, as principle of the world). For he beholds the truth of things as they are in their essence, he himself being the impersonation of Truth. Thus he looks through the Future and foretells; he knows that Neptune will avenge the deed done to Polyphemus, that the Oxen of the Sun constitute a great danger, that Ulysses will punish the Suitors; then he prophesies the peace and final harmony of Ulysses after his long ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... brief absence he seemed to have completely groomed himself, and stood there, the impersonation of close-cropped, clean, and wholesome English young manhood. The two women ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... or bad for me, as an actress, to cease from practicing my craft for six years. Talma, the great French actor, recommends long spells of rest, and says that "perpetual indulgence in the excitement of impersonation dulls the sympathy and impairs the imaginative faculty of the comedian." This is very useful in my defense, yet I could find many examples which prove the contrary. I could never imagine Henry Irving leaving the stage for six months, let alone six years, and I don't think it would have been of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... looms of Paris or of Persia could not imitate, scattering bouquets of colours the most happily contrasted, and impregnating the air with the most grateful fragrance, we at once acknowledge her beautiful impersonation in that "monument of Grecian art," the Farnese Flora, of which we have brought the fresh recollection from the museum ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... in this impersonation, became sufficiently soft and tremulous to give Mrs. Baxter a fair idea of the tender yearning of the original. "'OH, MY BABY-TALK ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... with her in parlor and halls; sang to her accompaniment when she would have exorcised the phantom by music—was always, whenever and wherever he appeared—the tender, ingenuous, manly youth she had loved and reverenced as the impersonation of her ideal lord; the demi-god whom she had worshipped, heart and soul—set, in her exulting imagination no lower than the angels, and beheld in the end,—with besmirched brow and debased mien, a disgraced sensualist, not merely a deceiver ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... said in a very grave voice, in his favourite impersonation of the man of honour, "whatever I tell you—if I give way at all and tell you anything—you must hear in confidence, and must repeat to nobody. If you do repeat it, you'll get me into very serious trouble. And not only so, but as nobody knows it except myself, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the impersonation of the principle of evil we are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and possession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,—the antagonism of good. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... scale on the music-hall stage. But in the ring he was perfect. The mastery of his craft, the cleanness of his jugglery, amazed me. He divested himself of his wig and did a five minutes' act of lightning impersonation with a trick felt hat, the descendant of the Chapeau de Tabarin: the ex-Kaiser, Foch, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, President Wilson—a Boche prisoner, a helmeted Tommy, a Poilu—which was marvellous, considering the painted Petit Patou face. For all assistance, Elodie held up a cheap bedroom wall-mirror. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested, like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its native element, only as a part may be taken for ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... on by the grossest element of mortal mind, Herod decreed the death of every male child in order that the man Jesus, the masculine representative of the 565:12 spiritual idea might never hold sway and de- prive Herod of his crown. The impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our 565:15 Master; but "of his kingdom there shall be no end," for Christ, God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and peoples - imperatively, absolutely, finally ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their stale platitudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given her admirable impersonation of a Massachusetts legislator. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... is the merit and the glory of Mohammed that, beside founding twenty spiritual empires and providing laws for the guidance through centuries of millions of men, he shook the foundations of the faith of heathendom. Mohammed was the impersonation of two principles that reign in the government of God,—destruction and salvation. He would receive nations to his favor if they accepted the faith, and utterly destroy them if they rejected it. Yet, in the end, the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... as you say yourself, be inevitable. The person who holds the key of his life, the impersonation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... for him; but he was the first to take notice that the play of Richard III. indicated in its main extent a different hand, and it is now generally admitted to have been the work of Fletcher. With the keenest insight he noticed that the magician Prospero was an impersonation of Shakespeare himself; and George Brandes, the most thoroughgoing of Shakespearean scholars, afterwards came to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... supplies go forth, and to which all returning channels converge; the cosmopolitan centre of a New World. Berlin is the increasingly important capital of the German Empire,—growing rapidly, but still the royal impersonation of Prussia and the Hohenzollerns; seated in something of mediaeval costume and quiet beside the river Spree; as content to cast a satisfied glance backward to Frederick the Great and the Electors of Brandenburg as to look forward to imperial supremacy among the Great Powers, and the ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... only lonely one up on the platform and with only me to be a credit to him—and me not doing it. I prayed for an immediate plan and as I prayed, as is my custom, I acted. I asked Mr. Douglass Byrd quick, if there was time for me to do an impersonation, and he answered with ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... in the soft mounds (to the detriment of our black dresses, by the way, for upon emerging we were covered with burrs and straws), and being far from reproving ears we sung both sacred and secular music, and laughed at a droll impersonation, of ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... nosegay up into the balcony to Juliet. Robbie had provided himself with the "property" in question, and, pending the moment at which it was necessary to use it, he had deposited it on the floor behind him. But in the fervor of impersonation, he had not observed that Liza had crept up and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... however, was altered. Petronella had drawn Armine aside one way, and now that he was come back again, he did not find the same perfectly sympathetic sister as before. Bobus had not been without effect upon her, as the impersonation of common sense and antagonism to Miss Parsons. It had not shown at the time, for his domineering tone and his sneers always impelled her to stand up for her darling; but when he was "poor Bobus" gone into exile and bereft of his love, certain poisonous germs attached ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... an agreeable surprise to learn that the chief of the visiting party was Professor Goldwin Smith of Canada, one of the firmest of our British friends. As the President rose to greet them, he was the very impersonation of easy dignity, notwithstanding the negligence of his costume. With a tact that never deserted him, he opened the conversation with an inquiry as to the health of his friend John Bright, whom he said he regarded as a friend of our country and of freedom ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... of the mingling opinions of the East and West, which were gradually growing up into Gnosticism. (See Matter. Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 154.) St. John's sense of the Logos seems as far removed from the simple allegory ascribed to the Palestinian Jews as from the Oriental impersonation of the Alexandrian. The simple truth may be that St. John took the familiar term, and, as it were infused into it the peculiar and Christian sense in which it is ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... duskily pallid, deeply wrinkled at forty, his black eyes watery and set in baggy circles of a dull brown, his lean dark hands shaky and dirty, his linen wrinkled and buttonless, his clothing frayed and unbrushed, he was an impersonation of failure. He had gone into the legislature with a desperate hope of somehow finding money in it, and as yet he had discovered nothing more than his beggarly three dollars a day, and he felt himself more than ever a failure. No wonder that he wore an air of profound depression, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... Vesta and to keep the interior of the temple and the shrines pure and clean, and the sacred vessels and utensils arranged, as in a well-ordered household. In a word, they were to be, in purity, in industry, in neatness, in order, and in patience and vigilance, the perfect impersonation of maidenly virtue as exhibited in its own proper field ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... taking his life as a whole, were predominant in their power to affect his happiness and give matter for his thoughts. Those who are least partial to him will allow that his was essentially a virile intellect. He wrote, he thought, he spoke, he acted, like a man. The public regarded him as an impersonation of vigour, vivacity, and self-reliance; but his own family, together with one, and probably only one, of his friends, knew that his affections were only too tender, and his sensibilities only too acute. Others may well be loth to parade what ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... and when the medival astrologer did the same, he named the space a "house." On the Roman temple an altar was set up, and there, perhaps beneath the spreading branches of a royal oak, sacred to Jupiter, the king of the gods, or of an olive, sacred to Minerva, the maiden goddess, impersonation of ideas, who shared with him and his queen the highest place among the Capitoline deities, prayers and ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... Parsifal Festival, in 1882, was one of these exceptions. He reflected the spirit of the gruesome text assigned to him so admirably that Wagner was delighted; but afterward he complained that Hill's fine impersonation was not so widely appreciated as it deserved to be; and why? Apparently, because Klingsor's melodic intervals were not pleasing, nor ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... than in any other play upon this subject that has been presented. This result, an approximate fidelity to the original, is due in part to the preservation of the witch scenes, in part to Mr. Irving's subtle and significant impersonation of Mephistopheles, and in part to a weird investiture of spiritual mystery with which he has artfully environed the whole production. The substance of the piece is the love story of Faust and Margaret, yet beyond this is a background of infinity, and over and around this ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... success he can gain in Bayreuth. Brema's Fricka is noble and full of charm; Schumann-Heink sings the music of Erda with some sense of its mystery and of Waltraute in "Siegfried" with considerable passion; and Gulbranson has vastly improved her impersonation of Bruennhilde since last year. She is still unmistakably a student, but no one can doubt that she will develop into a really grand artist if she avoids ruining her fine voice by continually using it in a wrong way. Her Bruennhilde is just now very beautiful and intensely pathetic, but it owes ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... reined up before the cafe door of the As de Pique, she arrested her horse before the great Marshal who was the impersonation of authority, and put her hand up in the salute, with her saucy wayward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent, awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the Second Empire, stretched its hand of iron across the sea, and forced the soldiers ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... indeed, he was distantly connected, his own first cousin having been married en secondes noces to the Sieur de Bulkeley, from whom, as every one knows, the Dukes of Cheshire are lineally descended. Accordingly, he made arrangements for appearing to Virginia's little lover in his celebrated impersonation of "The Vampire Monk, or the Bloodless Benedictine," a performance so horrible that when old Lady Startup saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year's Eve, in the year 1764, she went off into the most piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy, and died in ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde

... her sorrow. The younger lady, on the other hand, who was Lady Errol's sister,— Heavens! what a spirit of joy and festal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice, her manner! She was Irish, and the very impersonation of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps, amongst Irish women than those of any other country. Mourning, I have said, she wore; from sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that sole expression there was about her of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... dear me!" says Jurgen, "this is astonishingly inadequate impersonation, as any married man would see at once. Well, I made no contract to love any such plain and short-tempered person. I repudiate the claims of any such person, as manifestly unfair. And I pledge undying affection to this high and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... men's hearts, until the fulness of time came, and the ideal of the Divine thought was fulfilled in the Son of Man." (p. 70.) In other words, CHRIST was nothing more than the fullest development and impersonation of the best thoughts and feelings of the (so-called) prophets! He "fulfilled in His own person the highest aspiration of Hebrew seers and of mankind, thereby lifting the ancient words, so to speak, into a new and higher power; and therefore was recognized as having eminently ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... much attracted by a very sweet and charming actress. She appeared to me as the impersonation of all that was lovely. Her complexion was fair, and her hair golden—a head that Murillo would have loved to paint. She was rather petite, but, oh dear me, what a figure! What ankles! What sweetly moulded ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... This stanza is remarkable for being (so far as the present writer is aware) the only instance in Japanese literature of that direct impersonation of an abstract idea which is so very strongly marked a characteristic of Western thoughts and ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... some emergency, which would hurt the feelings of those around you. Do not trust only to your own experience. The Neapolitan character has been violent in every age, and you have to do with a woman [Queen of Naples] who is the impersonation of crime" (Napoleon to Joseph, May 31, 1806.—Du Casse, tome ii. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... consider this a most interesting coincidence. He thought the world might well congratulate America upon being the Geographical Apotheosis of that great unspotted character, who, while he yet lived, was prospectively her typical impersonation. The three stars by a more than tenfold increase have expanded into thirty-three; the glorious Issue has abundantly vindicated every antecedent fact; and your whole emergent eagle, fully plumed, is now long risen from its eyrie and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... prostrate figure with two heads, four arms, and one body. The two heads were interpreted by some to represent Egmont and Horn, by others, the two Nassaus, William and Louis. Others saw in them an allegorical presentment of the nobles and commons of the Netherlands, or perhaps an impersonation of the Compromise and the Request. Besides the chief inscription on the pedestal, were sculptured various bas-reliefs; and the spectator, whose admiration for the Governor-general was not satiated with the colossal statue itself, was at liberty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... embodiment of pluck. The thing in feathers of which he is afraid has yet to be evolved. Like the mediaeval knight, he goes about seeking those on whom he can perform some small feat of arms. In certain parts of India he is known as the kotwal—the official who stands forth to the poor as the impersonation of the might and majesty ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... Mrs. Banks was about right as to John Emery; he was an actor of the first-class, and has never been replaced in his peculiar line. I have seen Emery play Tyke in the "School of Reform." It was a wonderful impersonation. I have seen ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... briefly the progress of amateur acting in this country, from the impersonation of a Danish minstrel by ALFRED THE GREAT, to the Victory Varieties Matinee arranged by Lady ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... quivered with the desire to be cruel. She had to put it down before she could tell the simple truth. One little corner of Kate's mouth quivered and jerked for a second under her teeth before she caught herself and resumed the impersonation of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... Lou, opening her eyes and standing, the impersonation of conscious guilt. She felt disgraced. She felt the silence. She felt she could not meet the eyes of the other little girls. And she felt sick. Her throat was sore. In the Third Reader one's face burned from the red-hot stove so near by, while ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... of British royalty were heavier than the private functions of the hardest-worked Englishman. "In these scenes and a hundred like them a Prince's function cannot be discharged satisfactorily unless he be at once an impersonation of Royal state and, what is harder still, his own individual self. He must act his public character as if he enjoyed the festival as much as any of the spectators. He must be able to stamp a national impress upon the solemnity yet mark its local and ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... Silent to Washington, whom he in many respects resembled. The American, like the Dutch patriot, stands out in history as the very impersonation of dignity, bravery, purity, and personal excellence. His command over his feelings, even in moments of great difficulty and danger, was such as to convey the impression, to those who did not know him intimately, that he was a man of inborn calmness and almost impassiveness of disposition. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... months that Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these forgotten prints I came upon many complimentary allusions to Mr. Coates: 'The visitor welcomed (by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind,' 'the ubiquitous,' 'the charitable riche.' Of his 'forthcoming impersonation of Romeo and Juliet' there were constant puffs, quite in the modern manner. The accounts of his debut all showed that Mr. Pryse Gordon's account of it was fabulous. In one paper there was a bitter attack on 'Mr. Gordon, who was responsible for this ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... first feared. Evidently another ship, or perhaps more, had joined the Archer and accompanied her boats up the river. He could not help also turning round to see what the old Spaniard was doing. There he stood on his perch surveying his motley crew—the impersonation of an evil spirit—so Jack thought. Yet he looked quite calm and quiet, with a smile—it was not a pleasant one, however—playing on his countenance. In a moment afterwards his whole manner changed; he sprang off the ground and clapped his hands, crying out loudly, "Tira! ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... see me, and their presence immediately banished all anxiety and care. They seemed so happy when I came—for Charlotte used to teach them to prize my presence by dating their pleasures by my arrival; that I thought it joy enough for one mortal to have looked upon the impersonation of innocence and joy in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... renewed hunger, fresh mockeries. For onward, farther onward must they wander. Every now and then one of them sank down, begging for pity and compassion. But what cared the soldiers, who only saw in the children the impersonation of the hated enemy, to be tortured and worried ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... Southern slave would be allowed by any human master to inhabit. If he would benefit men as a class, our own sailors need all his philanthropy. But the good anti-slavery brother is possessed with the idea that the Southern slave is the impersonation of injustice and misery, and that those who stand in the relation of masters are guilty of crimes, daily, which ought to shut ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... view-point of different characters, with an appreciation of the relative force of different appeals to those characters, in order that the responsive voice may have the convincing ring which expresses the psychology of the character represented, and not merely the mannerisms and externalities of impersonation. ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick

... Zenobia. To Tancred, with her inspired brow, her cheek slightly flushed, her undulating figure, her eye proud of its dominion over the beautiful animal which moved its head with haughty satisfaction at its destiny, Eva seemed the impersonation of some young classic hero going ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." In the light of the general principle laid down, that God is the actual fulness of truth and love and light and blessedness; that Christ, the Logos, is the manifested impersonation of them; and that all men who receive him partake of their Divine substance and enjoy their prerogative, the texts just cited, and numerous other similar ones, are transparent. It is difficult to see how on any other hypothesis they can be made to express an intelligible ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... we read or hear of the Passion of the Saviour, it is the thought, the emotion, burning and seething within it, at which by invisible contact our own thought and emotion catch fire; and the capabilities of impersonation and manufacture are mocked by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... were, I may say, manifold. In the first place, Mr. Sowerby was a Whig, and was seated in Parliament mainly by the interest of that great Whig autocrat the Duke of Omnium, whose residence was more dangerous even than that of Mr. Sowerby, and whom Lady Lufton regarded as an impersonation of Lucifer upon earth. Mr. Sowerby, too, was unmarried—as indeed, also, was Lord Lufton, much to his mother's grief. Mr. Sowerby, it is true, was fifty, whereas the young lord was as yet only twenty-six, but, nevertheless, her ladyship was becoming anxious on the subject. In her mind every ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... untarnished name, he had always a pleasant, if pompous greeting for every one, and he preached and lived like a gentleman. He was well-dressed and amiable, and his only display of temper or touchiness took the rather curious form of adopting some impersonation not in accordance with the circumstances in which for the moment ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... William Bowen, between whom, especially on the side of the latter, strong professional jealousy existed. Bowen, a low comedian of "some talent and more conceit," taunted Quin with being tame in a certain role, and Quin retorted in kind, declaring that Bowen's impersonation of a character in "The Libertine" was much inferior to that of another actor. Bowen seems to have had an ill-balanced mind; he was so affected by Jeremy Collier's "Short View" that he left the stage ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... with more significance than if they had been an insect-murmur amidst the sum of current noises. Deronda, awaiting the barge, now turning his head to the river-side, and saw at a few yards' distant from him a figure which might have been an impersonation of the misery he was unconsciously giving voice to: a girl hardly more than eighteen, of low slim figure, with most delicate little face, her dark curls pushed behind her ears under a large black hat, a long woolen cloak over her shoulders. Her hands ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... stranger: he finds all the women departed from the town, and sees Cadmus and Teiresias in masque. Like the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious plays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of stupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy first infatuate. Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... pawed the basket feebly again and, upon another outburst from on high, prostrated himself flat. Again threatened, he gave a superb impersonation of a worm. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... name of Hugh Miller will ever stand forth as synonymous with all that is honest and manly; as the impersonation of moral courage and indomitable energy; as the true ideal of a self-educated man. From the humblest sphere of life, and from the toils of a stone-mason's apprentice, without means, without friends, without other than the most rudimentary education, he rose, by his own unaided and unwearied exertions, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... general buzz of conversation, the subject of which was quite easily understood. The stately dame du comptoir immediately opened her little wicket and came down from her perch to show the couple to the best seats, a courtesy rarely extended by that impersonation of restaurant dignity. The hungry women almost stopped eating to see what man was in tow of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is not seldom afforded by the bara roopees. Bara means twelve, and roop is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters' make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent would astonish you. With ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the side of its head. Sandal-wood is burnt under the beast's nostrils, which is supposed to induce the soul of the departed to enter and establish itself in the animal. The clothes, the turban, the shield, the jewellery, are torn from the figure's back and piled on to the goat, which is now the impersonation of the deceased. It is fed until it can hold no more, wine and liquor being poured down its throat, and large dishes of all possible delicacies being placed before it. The women relatives devote to it their tenderest affection, and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... poet has preserved the popular belief with regard to Merlin, who is generally supposed to have been a contemporary of Vortigern. Opinion is divided as to whether he were a real personage, or a mere impersonation, formed by the poetic fancy of a credulous people. It seems most probable that such a man did exist, and that, possessing knowledge as much above the comprehension of his age, as that possessed by Friar Bacon was beyond the reach of his, he was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... personages; and her spontaneous burst of grateful affection, on recognizing, at Meroe, the voice of her foster-father, Charicles, is expressed with exquisite tenderness. Of the subordinate characters little need be said. Charicles is a mere impersonation of benevolence and parental love; and Cnemon seems to have been introduced for little else than to tell his own long story, and listen to that of Calasiris in return. The old Egyptian priest, however, is a sketch of considerable merit. Like Scott's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... extreme. Ruperto Rivas, despite the shabby habiliments in which the gaol authorities had arrayed him, looked all dignity and grandeur, while El Zorillo—the little fox, as his prison companions called him—was an epitomised impersonation of wickedness and meanness; not only crooked in soul, but in body—being in point of fact an enano ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... was striking. Rather mal-formed, he was under the middle size; his head seemed large for his person, and his shoulders were of unusual breadth. His complexion was dark, and his eyes hazel; and when his countenance was lit upon the recitation of some witty tale, he looked the impersonation of mirthfulness. Eccentric as were some of his habits and modes of action, he was seriously impressed by religious principle; some of his devotional compositions are admirable specimens of sacred poetry. He left an unpublished MS. poem, entitled ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... reading of both prose and verse is always faultless. I mean Mr. Otis Skinner, who secured his early training playing minor parts with actors of the "old school." It has become possible, under present conditions, for young actresses ignorant of elocution and unskilled in the first principles of impersonation to be exploited as stars merely because of their personal charm. A beautiful young woman, whether she can act or not, may easily appear "natural" in a society play, especially written around her; and the public, lured by a pair of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... had fallen rather back, showing the masses of her glorious hair, and all her flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange lustre, though there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes. I saw the impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately lovely—the Lust ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... to hear Dave Dyer's hen-catching impersonation seven times, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" nine times, the Jewish story and the funeral oration twice; but now she was ardent and, because she did so want to be happy and simple-hearted, she was as disappointed as the others when the stunts were ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... distraught soul,[3228] pouring out his heart to relieve himself. When a creation of characters is imperative, as in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one kind, that which through education, birth, or impersonation, always speak correctly, in other words, like so many people of high society. No others are portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and Racine to Marivaux and Beaumarchais. So strong is the habit that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... sensitive or more genuinely patriotic, thundered on, applauding the lines as well as the growing power of Helen's impersonation. Royleston was at last beginning to play, the fumes of his heavy dinner having cleared away. He began to grip his lines, and that gave the star her first opportunity to forget his weakness and throw herself into her part. All in all, only a very discriminating ear could ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... is, one out of the two millions of people in this great town, know, that the above is the title of a somewhat romantic drama, in which Miss Kelly is fast monopolizing the tears and sympathies of the public by her impersonation of a Sister of Charity. To witness it will do every heart good; and this is the highest aim of a dramatic representation. The performance has had the effect of drawing our attention to the original of the character, which is intensely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various

... the stud it might play out this comedy of errors by hunting down Rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. For a while, at least, until Evarin found out what had happened. I didn't deceive myself that I could carry the impersonation ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... They were smooth, but too muscular,—real arms of a soldier, they were made for the sword and the shield. On his head was a garland of roses. With brows joining above the nose, with splendid eyes and a dark complexion, he was the impersonation of youth and strength, as it were. To Lygia he seemed so beautiful that though her first amazement had passed, she was barely able to answer,—"A ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... June-bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse-beat of the dashing brook sounded in his ear notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming-bird, darting like a sunbeam, to kiss the pouting lips of the upturned flowers was, to him, the impersonation of its beauty. And I said: Truly, this is the nearest approach in this world, to the paradise of long ago. Then I saw him skulking like a cupid, in the shrubbery, his skirts bedraggled and soiled, his face downcast with guilt. He had ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another; her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation in ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... with me, and thereby afford proof that you are alive, my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine that I have been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to circumvent the ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you in order to render possible your escape. For that, you may rest ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... impersonation, simulation, feigning, stage-playing, histrionicism, histrionism, affectation mimicry, pantomime (acting ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the sacred inscriptions. How alive he makes Monadnoc! Dinocrates undertook to "hew Mount Athos to the shape of man" in the likeness of Alexander the Great. Without the help of tools or workmen, Emerson makes "Cheshire's haughty hill" stand before us an impersonation of kingly humanity, and talk with us as a god ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... was in the character of a coster-girl, a part well suited to her audacity and impertinent prettiness. Poppy was the tiniest dancer that ever whirled across a stage, a circumstance that somewhat diminished the vulgarity of her impersonation, while it gave it a very engaging character of its own. Her small Cockney face, with its impudent laughing nose, its curling mouth (none too small), its big, twinkling blue eyes, was framed in a golden fringe and side curls. She wore a purple velveteen ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... fisherman returned. He stood in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole countenance, and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken for an impersonation of the sun shining ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... morality of theater-going was one Scott felt obliged to discuss when he was writing upon the drama. He found its vindication, characteristically, in a universal human trait,—the impulse toward mimicry and impersonation,—and in the good results that may be supposed to attend it. In naming these he lays what seems like undue stress on the teaching of history by the drama, in language that might quite as well be applied to historical novels. His argument on the literary side also is stated ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... Melville. Dr. Coan has also been most helpful with suggestions in other directions. Finally, the delicate fancy of La Fargehas supplemented the immortal pen-portrait of the Typee maiden with a speaking impersonation ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... of garlands hung between the skulls of oxen and goats, we cannot for a moment doubt the sacrificial idea on which the design was founded. When the wreaths are carried by dancing children, we recognize the impersonation of the rejoicing ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... impersonation of military discipline, the soldier crossed the room, and stared into the unshaven face of the Sergeant. Suddenly his eyes brightened, and he wheeled about as if on a pivot, again bringing his gloved ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... a lurching vessel through the long crystal day. Never before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening of brilliance from dawn ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... Browdie, the elder of the raiders, in a husky voice affecting an untutored accent. He had some special ability as a mimic, and, being familiar with the dialect and manners of the people, this gift greatly facilitated the rustic impersonation he had essayed. "Ye're haulin' late," he added, for the hour was close ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... not wait for the coach, but proceeded towards the turn-stile, where the old woman (who had either seen, or scented from a distance that tizzy of which I was the impersonation),— ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and finally he became unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He sneers continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he himself, though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. No thought however beautiful, no image however magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English; but present him with the most trivial common-places in Greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine; mistaking the pleasurable ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... Phenomena. Phenomena Without Darkness. Test Conditions. Is Darkness Necessary? Developing Circles. Impersonating Mediumship. The Proper Mental Condition. Proof of Spirit Identity. The "Trance Condition." Spirit Impersonation. Spirit Suggestion. Psychic Attunement. Automatic Writing. Inspirational Speaking. Gradual Development of Powers. Spirit Guides. No Loss of Individuality. Mediumship Beneficial. Mediumship and the ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... an opportunity to pose in the limelight, and so you are not to hear that Don pulled off any brilliant feats that afternoon. What he did do was to very thoroughly vindicate Mr. Robey's selection of him for Gafferty's position by giving an excellent impersonation of a concrete block on defence and by doing rather better than he had ever done before when his side had the ball. Don had actually speeded up considerably, much as Tim had assured him he could, and while he ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... every side surrounds the land, Michabo sends forth these messengers, who, in the myth, are called Gijigouai, which means "those who make the day," and they light the world. He is never identified with the sun, nor was he supposed to dwell in it, but he is distinctly the impersonation of light.[1] ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... and limitation of matter, and to ascribe to Him a transcendental degree of whatever perfection our notion of spirit may involve, than to classify Him, or to predicate of Him that finite nature which we call a spirit. God is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless Being, no question of 'spirit' being raised;" so that the first intuition of the unsophisticated mind is found to be in more substantial agreement ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... doubt. Nothing dispirited, we sat down to a leg of mutton, which Brown had so far departed from his household economy as to order for us at six, and enjoyed our evening as thoroughly as if we had been a triple impersonation of Colonel Hawker in point of successful sportmanship. Nor was it until after the second bottle of port that we began to accuse each other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... counterparts have the same peculiarity? When Armado tells the 'country lass' he is wooing, that he will 'tell her wonders,' she exclaims,—'skittish female' that she is,—'What, with that face?' And when Holofernes, nettled with the ridicule showered on his abortive impersonation of Judas Maccabaeus, says, 'I will not be put out of countenance,'—Byron replies, 'Because thou hast no face.' The indignant pedant justifies, and, pointing to his physiognomy, inquires, 'What is this?' Whereupon the waggish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... words in an undertone with Mrs. Malplaquet, "this is my house. That is sufficient explanation for my presence here, I imagine. But I confess I am curious to know what this person"—he indicated Desmond—"is doing in my clothes, if I mistake not, giving what I take to be a very successful impersonation of myself." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... is in its kind matchless in fiction. Wonderfully fine too are many of the touches in "Moll Flanders": the whole story of her descent from the honesty of a simple serving-maid to the horrors of Newgate and transportation, is so masterful, the art is so consummate, the impersonation by Defoe of the character of a subtle trollop full of roguish moralizings and thin sentimentalities, is so extraordinary, that one can never cease to deplore that, not the subject of the book, but Defoe's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... herself, though with great difficulty. She, so wildly brought up, without rule or guidance in feminine matters, could not be brought to comprehend that prim line-and-rule life, of which her aunt was the very impersonation. Nevertheless, she heard what Miss Thornton had to say with respect; and if ever she committed an extreme GAUCHERIE, calculated to set her aunt's teeth on edge, she always discovered what was the matter, and mended it as far as she ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... when we get there we find that the deity whom we have invoked is only a marble image that sits deaf, dumb, motionless, whilst we cling to its unconscious skirts. As one of the saddest of our modern cynics once said, looking up at that lovely impersonation of Greek beauty, the Venus de Milo, 'Ah! she is fair; but she has no arms,' so we may say of all false refuges to which men betake themselves. The goddess is powerless to help, however beautiful the presentment of her may have seemed to our eyes. The evils ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... together, and the whole group looked sad and dejected. At each end of the car stood two ruffianly-looking personages, with large canes in their hands, and, if their countenances were an index of their hearts, they were the very impersonation of hardened villany itself. ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton

... study of religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up—say in the earlier part of last century—there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun—unless indeed (if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod, of course; Hercules was a sungod; Samson was a sungod; Indra and Krishna, and even Christ, the same. C. F. Dupuis in France (Origine de tous les Cultes, 1795), F. Nork in ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... as far as it could be seen above the turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple assumed the stately tread of an ambassador; and the husband, who was at least seventy, stopped complaisantly every time the terrier began to gambol. I hastened to pass this living impersonation of my Meditation, and was surprised to the last degree to recognize the Marquis de T——-, friend of the Comte de Noce, who had owed me for a long time the end of the interrupted story which I related in the Theory of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... syndicate, such as the silly novelists are forever writing about, and we'll threaten to put him out of business unless he comes to our terms.' But you overlook one important fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits of a gigantic criminal system—you, Popinot, who live by standing between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you, Wertheimer, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... situation full of gloom and sad foreboding. But Scribe and Boieldieu knew better. Their hero is a dashing cavalry officer, who makes love to every pretty woman he comes across, the 'White Lady of Avenel' among the number. Yet no one who has witnessed the impersonation of George Brown by the great Roger can have failed to be impressed with the grace and noble gallantry ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... Still on they came up to the very muzzles of the guns; they were blown away from the cannon's mouth but yet they did not waver. Pickett had taken the key to the position and the glad shout of victory was heard, as, the very impersonation of a soldier, he still forced his troops to the crest of Cemetery Ridge. Kemper and Armistead broke through Hancock's line, scaled the hill and planted their flags on its crest. Just before Armistead was shot, he placed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... cannot omit a notice of Mr. Benjamin Sears' impersonation of the aged schoolmaster, Cedar. The dignity and simplicity of the character combined, was rendered by him in such a manner as almost to bring back those forgotten tears, drawn forth in olden times by that masterpiece of acting of Harry ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... you that I pretended to accept this man as the real Jimmy Crocker for a purpose. At present there is nothing that you can do. Mere impersonation is not a crime. If I had exposed him when we met, you would have gained nothing beyond driving him from the house. Whereas, if we wait, if we pretend to suspect nothing, we shall undoubtedly catch him red-handed in an ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the joy that he took in this double impersonation and how easy it was, with the help of his wife, to fool you to the top of your bent. He had already derived the exquisite entertainment of seeing you jealous of his attentions to Jenny and suspicious that she was yielding to them; while she—well, it is instructive to consider again her ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... broad lace collar to the high-heeled shoes with their huge rosettes, the young man of the picture represents the height of the prevailing fashion. His hair is carefully curled in the manner of the Cavaliers. He is in fact the impersonation of the court life of the period. It is pleasant to fancy the graceful youth moving through the stately ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... had closed my eyes I could have sworn it was Miss Atkins," laughed Grace. "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... dispenser of the withered flowers. He was still looking at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth made his heart beat expectantly. A slinking gray shadow crossed the undulation and disappeared in the thicket. It was a coyote. At any other time the extraordinary appearance of this vivid impersonation of the wilderness, so near a centre of human civilization and habitation, would have filled him with wonder. But he had room for only a single ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... Shakespearean commentator, has given us a penetrating example of the effect of inflection; "In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons adopted successively three different intonations in giving the words 'We fail.' At first a quick contemptuous interrogation—'We fail?' Afterwards, with the note of admiration—'We fail,' an accent of indignant astonishment laying the principal ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... he launched into the drollest burlesque of a fashionable tenor and a prima-donna, as clever as could be. He was evidently a born mime as well as a musician, and presently delighted us with some farmyard imitations, and one particularly quaint impersonation, "an old lady singing with false teeth," sent ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As to the elder lady, sitting with her feet apart upon the lower brass ledge of the stove, supporting a lap-full of gloves while she cleaned one stretched on her left hand, she was a true Swiss impersonation of another kind; from the breadth of her cushion-like back, and the ponderosity of her respectable legs (if the word be admissible), to the black velvet band tied tightly round her throat for the repression of a rising tendency to goitre; ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... present times, the Hyenas and Bears of the European caverns, and the fossil Elk of Ireland, by the side of which even the Moose of our Northern woods is belittled, are remarkable instances in proof of this. One cannot but be struck with the fact that this first representation of Mammalia, the very impersonation of brute force in power, size, and ferocity, immediately preceded the introduction of man, with whose creation intelligence and moral strength became the dominant influences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... been sorry to subject her. Whenever the poor girl happened inadvertently to pass near the dog, which was seldom, a low growl made her aware of his proximity, and drove her to a quick retreat. He was, in fact, the animal impersonation of the animal opposition which she had continually to endure. Like chooses like; and the bull-dog in her brother made choice of the bull-dog out of him for his companion. So her day was one of shrinking ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man, from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the point of entering the shop before him—at another, he turned half round towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... what I did with myself for the next hour. I undressed and went to bed. The incessant strain involved in even the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know; then how much more so when the impersonation is impromptu! There's no getting your eye in; the next word may bowl you out; it's batting in a bad light all through. I haven't told you of half the tight places I was in during a conversation that ran into hours and ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... rivalling in magnitude and value the glass pendants of a lustre. Her reception of her guests made ample amends, in warmth and cordiality, for any deficiency of elegance; and as she disposed her ample proportions upon the sofa, and looked around upon the company, she appeared the very impersonation of hospitality. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever



Words linked to "Impersonation" :   mockery, charade, playacting, wit, deceit, spoof, playing, deception, mimicry, wittiness, imposture, witticism, sendup, acting, personation, travesty, dissimulation, impersonate, pasquinade, performing, takeoff, put-on, lampoon, humour, parody, mock-heroic, humor, imitation, apery, burlesque, dissembling, caricature



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com