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




Lackey   /lˈæki/   Listen
Lackey

noun
(pl. lackeys)
1.
A male servant (especially a footman).  Synonyms: flunkey, flunky.
2.
A person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage.  Synonyms: ass-kisser, crawler, sycophant, toady.






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 |





"Lackey" Quotes from Famous Books



... once he had reached the Mall, in finding Lord Claud's rooms; for everybody knew where they were situated, and looked with some respect upon Tom for inquiring. He was received at the door by a very fine lackey, and taken up a wide staircase, so richly carpeted that the footfall could not be heard upon it. Everywhere his eyes rested upon strange and costly products of foreign lands, such as he had never dreamed ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... perron of the servants' quarters appeared two bare-footed women with tucked-up skirts, carrying buckets, who were apparently scrubbing floors. She was not on the front perron, either; only Timon, the lackey, came forth in an apron, also apparently occupied with cleaning. Sophia Ivanovna came into the ante-chamber, attired in a silk ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... suspected him of having spent my two sous on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a common lackey. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... a powdered lackey, opening the folding doors of a magnificent dining-room. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle Zephyrine. The lieutenant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... instructive and amusing. The newspapers told the tale, which ran somewhat as follows: A wealthy woman of position, residing in one of the best quarters of St. Petersburg, hired a prepossessing young lackey as one of her large staff of domestics. Shortly after his advent, many articles of value began to disappear. Finally, suspicion having turned on this lackey, he also disappeared, and the police undertook ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... such an impelling appeal to all vain people, that the superior animal is discarded for the inferior? The dog is grossly and offensively obscene; he is dirty, he pollutes our streets; he is a coward, and has the pusillanimous spirit of a rather faint-hearted lackey. The cat, on the other hand, is decent, clean, consistently sanitary, brave, and possessed of the great-hearted self-reliant spirit of a born warrior. The cat, however, does not fawn, it does not flatter, it shows no devotion, it knows none ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... day, for instance. Thus they put it. All girls—and what else was Vanna, a wife in name?—walked there arm in arm. Others walked there also, she must know. By-and-by some pretty lad, an archer, perhaps, from the palace, some roistering blade of a gentleman's lackey, a friar or twinkling monk out for a frolic, came along with an "Eh, la bellina!" and then there was another arm at work. So, for one, whispered La Testolina, dipping a head full of confidence and mystery close to Vanna's as the girl sat working ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... ruddy tone of the punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored granite and the ices, Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed him over ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... and Ned passing quickly on mingled in the crowd, and soon moved away a considerable distance from the house. An hour later he went up a side street, in which was the door used by the servants and tradespeople of the count. A lackey was standing there. "I am the person expected," Ned said quietly to him. He at once led the way into the house up some back stairs and passages, along a large corridor, then opening a door, he ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... this, we are finally obliged by Mr. Hunter's document to concede that the stalworth archer (who, according to the ballad, maintained himself two-and-twenty years in the wood) was worn out by his duties as "proud porter" in less than two years, and was discharged a superannuated lackey, with five shillings in his pocket, "poar cas qil ne ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... group of elegant ladies is discovered at the further end of the room. Two of them are seated at the piano, with their backs to the audience, playing a duet. Another is at the harp. They are playing at sight, amid much laughter and many interruptions. A lackey ushers in a modestly dressed young girl who is accompanied by an officer of the Austrian Cavalry. Seeing that no one notices their entrance, these two remain standing a moment in a corner. The COUNT DE BOMBELLES comes ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... author gives a splendid picture of that magnificent court and the conditions which eventually brought about the revolution. The precarious position of every member of that court from La Pompadour down to the meanest lackey, whose very lives were in constant danger from the whims of the weak but self-indulgent king, is made very real by the author."—Globe-Democrat, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... Intellectually he was true and fearless; constitutionally, timid, contradictory, and weak; but never, if we understand him rightly, false. He was a little too credulous of sonorous sentiment, but he was never, like Chateaubriand or Lamartine, the lackey of fine phrases. If, as some fanciful physiologists have assumed, there be a masculine and feminine lobe of the brain, it would seem that in men of sentimental turn the masculine half fell in love with and made an idol of the other, obeying and admiring all the pretty whims of this folle du ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... us; but, if we would be respected, we must be our own masters, and not let others saddle us as they think fit. If we try to please every body, we shall be like a toad under a harrow, and never have peace; and, if we play lackey to all our neighbors, whether good or bad, we shall be thanked by no one, for we shall soon do as much harm as good. He that makes himself a sheep will find that the wolves are not all dead. He who lies on ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... after our arrival,' continued the postilion, 'I was sent, under the guidance of a lackey of the place, with a letter, which the priest, when he left, had given us for a friend of his in the Eternal City. We went to a large house, and on ringing were admitted by a porter into a cloister, where ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... be alone, and keep our own secret, and do our own work. I hate him, but he is too much a gentleman for a lackey ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... erring brain. From Freedom's field the recreant Horace flies To kiss the hand by which his country dies; From Mary's grave the mighty Peasant turns, And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns. While Rousseau's lips a lackey's vices own,— Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne! But when from Life the Actual GENIUS springs, When, self-transformed by its own magic rod, It snaps the fetters and expands the wings, And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god, How the mists vanish as the form ascends! ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Isidore, indignant at seeing these men thus hunt for his master in every corner, ventured to defy them. He opened a drawer and said, "Look and see if he is not in here!" The Commissary of Police darted a furious glance at him: "Lackey, take ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... the honour of kissing her hand; I left the apartment by another door and found myself on a back staircase, down which I descended without any one taking any notice of me, until, as I was looking for my carriage at the outer door, a lackey bustled up, and with a patronising air, said, 'Lord Lyndhurst, can I do ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... in a little group somewhat apart from the rest of the company, and were attended upon by a lackey who brought a full tankard at the first whistle on the empty one, and whom Mr. Dubbin, after a rapid succession of brimmers, insisted on calling "drawer." It was very seldom that Rochester condescended to take part in any entertainment on ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... with him his lackey to carry his game. If game is plentiful and the hunter successful, he would, otherwise, soon be compelled to discontinue his hunt from the burden of fish and game. But, freed from that care and burden, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... composed, as regarded its core, of the capable legions of Ariminum, and, by their side, of militia called out, most of whom were likewise accustomed to service; and, far from being discouraged by the last defeats, it was indignant at the but little honourable task which its general, "Hannibal's lackey," assigned to it, and it demanded with a loud voice to be led against the enemy. In the assemblies of the people the most violent invectives were directed against the obstinate old man. His political opponents, with the former praetor Gaius Terentius ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... "you are just the kind of servant I require. You are now my lackey, and if you are able to do three things that I command you I will give you one of my daughters for your wife and you ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... "tips" from financiers and bribes from Government contractors. In a democracy, the same sort of man will try to obtain his ends by flattering and cajoling the populace. It is not obvious that he is more mischievous as demagogue than he was as courtier, lackey, or parliamentary intriguer. Indeed, he is almost certainly less so, for he must at least in some fashion serve, even if only that he may deceive them, those whose servant he should be. At any rate, the purely self-seeking demagogue is certainly a recurrent figure ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... Concini and the disguised serving-men, he politely requested them to follow him; coupling the invitation with an assurance that his master had desired him to watch for the arrival of five great nobles who were about to consult his art. Lavallee, the lackey of M. de Bassompierre, assuming an air of importance, expressed both for himself and his companions their sense of this attention; and then, somewhat startled by the coincidence, for as such they simply considered it, the whole party followed their ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... you that neither," replied the lackey, "for I have not once seen her face during all the journey, though I have often heard her ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... or insane, but my serious mood and energetic investigations soon altered that notion. I might myself have doubted my mental soundness had it not been for the cross in my hand, which I at once recognized as being that worn by the nun, and had not a lackey finally confessed to having beheld the strange figure. He was coming from the colonnade with a tray of refreshments when he saw me in conversation with her. The mask had something familiar about her, he said, but he could not remember where he had seen her before. He had been a ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth

... lackey who had but lately returned from Guildford, whilst sitting over the kitchen fire with his cup of mead, had complained of sudden and violent pains, had vomited and fallen down upon the floor in a fit; whereat every person present had fled in wild dismay, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... affectation she seated herself at the piano, and played with precision several mazurkas by Chopin, which had only just come into fashion. The dinner-hour arrived; Lavretzky made a motion to depart, but they kept him; at table, the General treated him to good claret, for which the General's lackey had galloped in a cab to Depre's. Late at night, Lavretzky returned home, and sat for a long time, without undressing, his eyes covered with his hand, in dumb enchantment. It seemed to him, that only now had he come to understand why life was worth ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... again, our travellers have arrived at last in the great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets of La Ville Lumiere. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable perruquier is hurrying to an appointment. Or—in its way most curious of all—we see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... of them.' There is a sentiment of peace and comfort here that penetrates the soul." I replied, "If Fenelon were alive, you would be a Catholic." "Ah," said he, the tears in his eyes, "if Fenelon were alive, I would seek to be his lackey." ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... thirty, or even of sixty thousand. Lafayette coldly whispers it, and coldly asseverates it, to Count d'Estaing at the Dinner-table; and d'Estaing, one of the bravest men, quakes to the core lest some lackey overhear it; and tumbles thoughtful, without sleep, all night. (Brouillon de Lettre de M. d'Estaing a la Reine in Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 24.) Regiment Flandre, as we said, is clearly arrived. His Majesty, they say, hesitates about sanctioning the Fourth of August; makes observations, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... his thought, grudgingly conscious that he was ashamed of the real reason for giving up his work, Latisan evasively decided that the thing was now up to Echford Flagg. He had warned Flagg man fashion. He had given his word to Flagg as to what would happen if Flagg persisted in treating him like a lackey. Flagg had persisted. Latisan had kept his word. He could not retreat from that stand; he could not crawl back to Flagg and still maintain the self-respect that a drive master must have in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... circumstances. He was a poor man. He had never received any regular tuition such as Handel received from Zachau, Mozart from his father, and Mendelssohn from Zelter. He had to pick up his instruction as he went along; and if he felt constrained to play the lackey to Porpora, it was only with the object of receiving in return something which would help to fit him for his profession. As he naively said, "I improved greatly in singing, composition, and Italian." [The relations of Haydn and Porpora are sketched ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to America what Alexander was to Asia—captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... you, and you could not tell me to my face, 'You are too happy.' Then, like a coward, you dishonored me in the dark. Bertha was only the instrument of your rancor; and she weighs upon you to-day—you despise and fear her. My friend, Hector, you have been in this house the vile lackey who thinks to avenge his baseness by spitting upon the meats which he puts on his ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... What flowers! What lights! Each guest found his place without difficulty. As soon as he had read his name on the glazed card, a grand lackey in silk stockings pushed gently behind him a luxurious chair embroidered with a count's coronet. Fourteen at the table, not more: four young women in full toilets, and ten men belonging to the aristocracy of blood or of merit, who ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... see it, but seems unsuspecting—Grand Mistress denies that she meant mischief, but I upbraid her unmercifully—Threaten to dismiss her like a thieving lackey 251 ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... hundred and forty matres d'htel, ninety ladies of honor to the queen, in the sixteenth century! There were also an usher of the kitchen, a courier de vin (who took the charge of carrying provisions for the king when he went to the chase), a sutler of court, a conductor of the sumpter- horse, a lackey of the chariot, a captain of the mules, an overseer of roasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer (to provide ananches for Easter), a valet of the firewood, a paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth, and a hundred more for whose ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Guards' Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. But that was an old soldier's fallacy. The proper associates of an artist are they who practise his own art rather than they who—however honourably—do but cater for its practice. For the rest, I am sure that Mr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely to be seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour of his achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... home again. They went on and on, for it was a long way from the tsardom of that Tsar, and at last he grew weary and lay down in the grass, and she sat at his head. Then his lackey crept up to him, unfastened the self-slicing sword from his side, went up to the little Tsar, and said, "Self-slicing sword! slay him!" Then the self-slicing sword cut him into little bits, and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... not answer; and there was my Englishman quite in a rage, shrieking in the child's ear as if he must answer. He seemed to think that it was the duty of "the snob," as he called him, to obey the gentleman. This is why we are hated—for pride. In our free country a tradesman, a lackey, or a waiter will submit to almost any given insult from a gentleman: in these benighted lands one man is as good as another; and pray God it may soon be so with us! Of all European people, which is ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had a dream last night, and you were the only one among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an appointment, anyway—some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or something ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... phrases. One couple after the other stop dancing and follow the Guests in silence. For some time a single couple remain circling on the floor, but they too join the others at last. The musicians, however, continue to play, making the same desperate effort. The lackey turns out the electric lights, leaving only one light in the farthest chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... leave," I said, interposing quickly. "M. de Sillery may say too much or too little. Let a lackey take a message, bidding him go to the queen's closet, and he ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... them, had supposed them to be attendants of some foreign potentate from Barbary or Morocco. Cheditafa and Mok! The ragged, half-clad negroes of the sea-beach—a parson-butler of sublimated respectability, a liveried lackey of rainbow and gold! It required minutes to harmonize these presentments in the mind of ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... "His wretched lackey!" vociferated the judge. "By all the fiends in flames, I'll shoot that scoundrel Vincent with less remorse than I ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... old leaders to escape. Salicetti was too prominent a partizan to be overlooked by the angry burghers. For a time he was concealed by Mme. Permon in her Paris home. He escaped the vengeance of his enemies in the disguise of her lackey, flying with her when she left for the south to seek refuge for herself and children. Even the rank and file among the members of the Mountain either fled or were arrested. That Buonaparte was unmolested appears to prove how cleverly he had concealed his connection ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... episode have been so frequently given that the repetition is needless here. Besides, the point is elsewhere. Presently the lad fell overboard. Hadrian lost a valet, Rome an emperor, and Olympus a god. But in attempting to deify the lost lackey, the grief of Hadrian was so immediate, that it is permissible to fancy that the lad's death was not one of those events which the emperor-astrologer noted beforehand on his calendar. The lad was decently buried, the Nile gave up her dead, and ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... attendance, and, contriving to elude notice among the throng who were there lodged, was to take up his station at the foot of the stairs leading to the apartments of ladies, whence Eustacie was to descend at about eleven o'clock, with her maid Veronique. Landry Osbert was to join them from the lackey's hall below, where he had a friend, and the connivance of the porter at the postern opening towards the Seine ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... uncle, with the big beard and large hands, having asked his parents about the little fellow's accomplishments, placed himself in position with his arms crossed and asked: "Who am I like?" he replied: "You are like Napoleon's lackey." To his surprise, but no small delight, this reply elicited a loud exclamation of pleasure from his mother, usually so superior and so strict, and was rewarded by her, who ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... to this witness was the manner of a lackey who hangs on every syllable that falls ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... to it, in evening dress and with a chain round his neck, glanced up from the newspaper he was holding spread out in both hands before his calm and severe face. He didn't move; but another lackey, in brown trousers and claw-hammer coat edged with thin yellow cord, approaching Mr Verloc listened to the murmur of his name, and turning round on his heel in silence, began to walk, without looking ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... "Rosa says," went on for a long while. The former non-commissioned officer and lackey of the vaudeville star, Bulke, came towing Rosa across the deck in the same way as he did his master. Both looked red and contented. Frederick asked what the prospects were for ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... and went softly through the second anteroom to the hall. Again, all was empty and silent; neither page, nor sentry, nor lackey to be seen. She knew not why, but a feeling of desolation came over her. She had bidden adieu to the etiquette due to her rank, but this, she thought, was carrying the point ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... is saintly chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her. 300 MILTON: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... long for you to come back! The court is as dull as a cloister now that you are gone. My ridiculous father still struts about like a turkey-cock, as if all his medals and crosses could cover the fact that he is but a head lackey, with no more real power than I have. He wheedles a good deal out of the king, but what he does with it I cannot imagine, for little comes my way. I still owe those ten thousand livres to the man in the Rue Orfevre. Unless I ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... which, amid storms and alarms, daylight came steadily nearer. Storms and alarms: for there came rumors of quarrels out at Potsdam, quarrels on the old score between the Royal Spouses there; and frightful messages, through one Eversmann, an insolent royal lackey, about wedding Weissenfels, about imprisonment for life and other hard things; through all which Wilhelmina studied to keep her poor head steady, and answer with dignity yet discreetly. On the other hand, her Sisters are permitted ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... sheath his sword, And veiled his wrath in scornful word:' Rest safe till morning; pity 't were Such cheek should feel the midnight air! Then mayst thou to James Stuart tell, Roderick will keep the lake and fell, Nor lackey with his freeborn clan The pageant pomp of earthly man. More would he of Clan-Alpine know, Thou canst our strength and passes show.— Malise, what ho!'—his henchman came: 'Give our safe-conduct to the Graeme.' ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... generation is coming, straight from the heart of the people, and you will know nothing of it, neither you nor the Verhovenskys, father or son; nor I, for I'm a snob too—I, the son of your serf and lackey, Pashka.... Listen. Attain to God by work; it all lies in that; or disappear like rotten mildew. Attain to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... on me hurt. Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at Apollon like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying like a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was jeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears I could not help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put to shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... Madame de Lucenay, with a burst of sardonic laughter. "Know that when a lackey robs me—I do not break with ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... at his side, a few go in advance and so clear a way through the crowd—which is already moving at the top of the Sacred Way—to the point where you turn off on the left and ascend to the entrance to the Palatine Hill. Some of the clients will walk behind, where also will be a lackey or two in waiting. On the way Silius may perhaps meet with Manlius, another noble, whom he probably greets with "Good morning, brother," and a kiss upon the cheek. This kissing, it may be remarked, ultimately became an intolerable nuisance, particularly among the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... She passed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine's private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... himself distinctly in the wrong beside such unquestionable right. He even did not think himself so good-looking as he had formerly done. It seemed to him that he looked much older than Ida. When they went out together he felt like a lackey in attendance on an empress. In his own home, it came to pass that he seldom made a remark when guests were present without a covert glance at his wife to see what she thought of it. He could always tell what she thought, even if her face did ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... spelt) of Queen Victoria's youngest son prefixed to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of certain four-footed fellow-critics and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Marg, that's a good one, when all my life I have been in the habit of running in and out of your room, to do your bidding like a lackey," the young man retorted, mockingly. "But really this is an unexpected treat," he added, wickedly. "Miss Richards, in these fine togs, is the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen. And—'pon my word, Aunt Marg, I really ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... very strange thing," said he, bitterly, "to prosecute me as they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey." ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... The lackey stood astounded at my answer, as though he had not heard aright. Then he retired with less assurance than he had come, and John Paul sprang to his feet and laid his hands upon my shoulders, as was his wont when affected. He reproached himself for having ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... another. No attendant was immediately at hand. My Lord Marlborough—the most talked of man in Europe, and some say, at this juncture, as powerful as half a dozen Kings—rose and handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so important—and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest general so serves him, the little potentate ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... I waited upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet, about which I had read in ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... respectful to our great nation to keep a high functionary a waitin' arter this fashion, is it? Guess I'd better assart the honour of our republic by goin' away; and let him see that it warn't me that was his lackey last year.' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the Franks who are fixtures, and most of the Englishmen, Germans, Danes, etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion, on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lackey and overcharged by his washerwoman. Certainly, it was not a little staggering when the Sieurs Fauvel and Lusieri, the two greatest demagogues of the day, who divide between them the power of Pericles ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... that I carry it with me?' I cried in scorn. 'Do you think that when I came here, alone, and not with fifty dragoons at my back, I carried the Cardinal's seal in my pocket for the first lackey to find. But you shall have it. Where ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... Did I not watch her for a whole week at Saumur? 'Tis well we have not Aramon and the rest with us. The fewer there are the larger the shares. Can Malsain deal with the lackey?" ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... that he had a horror of the whole genus "lackey," and he could not even pass the soberly clad "gentlemen" of the Princess without a quivering of the muscles and a clenching of the fists. He found himself much more comfortable at the adjoining Green Dragon Inn, which stands near the river just on the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... a violent rage, and determined to drive him from her door, as she would have driven a lackey. A copious flow of tears produced a soothing effect upon her. It was better to keep it all to herself, and say nothing ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... an art dealer in a very big way, and he is also a pillar of one of the political parties. He could have a baronetcy for the asking, but he has no children and he prefers to be a power behind the throne rather than a lackey in ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson

... report was rendered, from a sense of duty, I am making this one with a sense of relief—a somewhat scandalous admission. Of course a really good footman would keep his mouth shut. But then I am but an indifferent lackey. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... my little lackey boyes, give the word as ye passe, look about to my guests there; score up at the Bar there; again, agen, my fine Mercuries; if youle live in the facultie, be rulde by instructions, you must be eyed like a Serjeant, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... wouldn't I make them know the difference between their Sovereign Lady and Sam the Lackey? If I had been in your place and that dastard Le Noir had said to me what he said to you, I do believe I should have stricken him dead with the lightning of my eyes! But what shall you do, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall no more go down,' and 'there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... unchurching her ignominiously, as fit only to deal with the Finite,—in other words, making her the lackey of mere Science,—they fancy they are doing famous service to Revelation. Very well,—we are ready to say,—having scourged Philosophy out of the temple, will you please, Gentlemen, to conduct us yourselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the music-room," she said to the lackey. When she entered she was breathing with some slight difficulty, for so Lynde affected her. She knew she had displayed fear by not going to him before, and previous cowardice plainly manifested does not add to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... out to grass with that old King, For I am weary of clothes and cooks. I long to lie along the banks of brooks, And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. Come, I will pluck off custom's livery, Nor longer be a lackey to old Time. Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb The wild trees for my food, and run Through dale and upland as a fox runs free, Laugh for cool joy and ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... twenties in your thirties. Another five years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a piano" will give way to remarks about ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... in order to obtain a 'coach.' To her mother (Mrs. Touchstone) she incessantly speaks words of most shameless indecency, which cannot be repeated; more especially as regards her 'coach,' for which she asks ever and anon. A lackey, called Hamlet, must procure it to her. We will give some fragments of that scene. The remainder cannot be offered to a modern ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... that brute, that idiot, who has nothing in his favor, neither good looks, birth, elegance, mind nor talent, for he has none—he has nothing but his neck and shoulders of a bull.... It is as if you had deceived me with a lackey.... No..... it is too terrible.... Ah, Catherine, swear to me that it is not true. Tell me that you no longer love me, I will submit, I will go away, I will accept all, provided that you swear to me you do not love that man—swear, swear!"... ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... you little wretch, this is another of your stupidities. A well-bred lackey would have spoken in a whisper to the gentlewoman in attendance; the latter would have come to her mistress and have whispered in her ear: "Here is the footman of Mr. So-and-so, who wants to speak to you, Madam." To which the mistress would have ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere

... crept closer to the curb, and the man slouched back against the wall close to the exit from which the revelers would soon emerge. A distant clock over a jeweler's window chimed the hour of four. A moment later the door opened, and a lackey came out and loudly called the number of the Hawley-Crowles car. That ecstatically happy woman, with Carmen and the obsequious young Duke of Altern, appeared behind him ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... [The lackey, having collected these and given them to the PRINCE, goes out. The PRINCE writes. Pause, during which he tears the letter he has begun in two and throws the pieces ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... gave thy letter to the porter, who passed it from lackey to lackey till it reached the lady it was ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... 'Thou cease!ess lackey to eternity, With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight: Devise extremes beyond extremity, To make him curse this cursed crimeful night: Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright; And the dire thought of his committed evil Shape every ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... round—an old, venerable, handsome face, with awfully sad eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make the least complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking his shoulder. The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening feeling of disgust. I shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his hand, and forbade him ever in my presence to strike old or young more; but everybody is doing it. The whip is in everybody's hands: the Pasha's running footman, as he goes bustling through the bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is an equally unsatisfactory story. The principal character is a young man who is supposed to be a revolutionist. He enters the service of a Petersburg dandy in hopes of meeting there a minister whom he wants to kill. The employer of the pseudo-lackey, who is not aware of any of his projects, is a masterful presentation of a type which we know as the sybaritical citizen; the character of the valet is so fantastical that the account of his adventures belongs absolutely to the "genre" of the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... whatever more might be necessary to its proper effect on the company when they should return. As she left the room, Lady Bernard told Roger to ring for a servant to clear the table for him, and render what other assistance he might want. He did so. A lackey answered the bell, and Roger requested him to remove the things from the table. The man left the room, and did not return. Roger therefore cleared and moved the table himself, and with difficulty got the bust upon it. Finding then several stains upon the pure ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... post-haste to earth he hurries, And knocks at the Archbishop of Canterbury's. The door was oped by a lackey in lace, Saying, "What's your business with his Grace?" "His Grace!" quoth Jerome—for posed was he, Not knowing what sort this Grace could be; Whether Grace preventing, Grace particular, Grace of that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... and shaking hands with him. The boxes were filled with ladies, and the scene was very amusing. Senor M——, whose box we occupied, ordered in cakes and wine, and about one o'clock we left the ball-room and returned home, one of our soldiers acting as lackey.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... leaning on the sill of his window, looked down with interest to see what manner of travellers were these that went at so red-hot a pace. From the rumble a lackey swung himself to the rough cobbles of the yard. From within the inn came again landlady and chamberlain, and from the stable ostler and boy, obsequious all and of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, "having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... which led to the Bastille have a modern air. One such case on a large scale occurred in 1702, and reveals an organized system of homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a handsome, well-made youth named Lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing himself off as a man of quality. Seduced at the age of 10 by a famous sodomist named Duplessis, he had since been at the disposition of a number of homosexual persons, including officers, priests, and marquises. Some of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... up. "But we lost an Assassin: discarnating this lackey won't equalize that. We think you should ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... chain, under Major Douglas, extending from Campbell Town, passed south of the Macquarie, to its junction with the Lake River. Both divisions, marching in a southerly direction, formed a line from Oyster Bay tier to Lackey's Mills. During these manoeuvres, a party were sent to examine the tier, extending from Swan River to Spring Bay; carefully, however, concealing the movement from the natives, lest they should be deterred from passing ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... the door was softly opened, and a lackey, who made his appearance at the threshold, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... and Mercury, sent by Jove, comes to question Prometheus as to the nuptials which he has boasted will accomplish the overthrow of the ruler of the Gods. Him Prometheus reviles with opprobrious epithets, calling him a lackey of the Gods, and refuses to disclose anything concerning the matter on which he questions him. The winged God, replying, threatens him with dire calamities. A tempest will come upon him and overwhelm him with thunderbolts, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... reached home I changed my dress and drove to the house of the "suffering" doyenne. She had not expected such quick inquiries, for she looked the picture of health; and I met on the staircase a court lackey evidently bent on the same errand. She stammered a great many things about her headache, and how, when she had that particular kind of headache, she was incapacitated from any effort. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... in the kitchen below, heard his master's swift, heavy step on the veranda, and hastened out only in time to clamber into his seat as Merwyn drove furiously away in the rain and darkness. Every moment the trembling lackey expected they would all go to-wreck and ruin, but the sagacious animals were given their heads, and speedily made their ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... this conversation, tells us that at the appointed time he returned to the house. All the barrels and wagons that had encumbered the courtyard were cleared away, and in their place were coroneted carriages, with footmen and servants. A lackey in brilliant livery conducted the visitor to the drawing-room on the first floor. The apartments were magnificently furnished, and glittered with mirrors, candelabra, gilt ornaments, and the most quaint and costly bric-a-brac. Viotti received his guests at the head of the staircase, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... over my toilet, and without waiting for my hair to be dressed I proceeded to the bishop's palace, and making a great deal of noise I almost compelled the servants to take me to his room. A lackey who was at the door informed me that his lordship was still ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... what is characteristic and picturesque in animal life is infallible; but his humanised wild creatures are also a playful, humorous, ironical presentation of mankind and of the society of his own day, from the grand monarch to the bourgeois or the lackey. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... faint and broken, but they touched the keys of memory; and through and above them, Otto heard the ranting melody of the wood-merchants' song. Mere blackness seized upon his mind. Here he was coming home; the wife was dancing, the husband had been playing a trick upon a lackey; and meanwhile, all about them, they were a by-word to their subjects. Such a prince, such a husband, such a man, as this Otto had become! And he sped the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thrown out into the street, I believe, but she was bundled bag and baggage on board a steamer for London. Did I tell you these people lived in Hamburg? Well yes—sent to the docks late on a rainy winter evening in charge of some sneering lackey or other who behaved to her insolently and left her on deck burning with indignation, her hair half down, shaking with excitement and, truth to say, scared as near as possible into hysterics. If it ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... indicate in what sort of toilet ladies were expected to appear. The gown must come up high about the neck and might be of any colour desired, or of black silk if the wearer was in mourning. Jewelry was not forbidden. A lackey in red livery would usher the strangers into the audience-chamber. Their petition must be carried in the hand. In the throne-room—where ladies were permitted to gaze to their hearts' content on the splendid display of Japanese porcelain—the major-domo ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... Harmless-Mirth did hang a little in hand, and could not so soon get him a master as the others did, because the town of Mansoul was now in Lent, but after a while, because Lent was almost out, the Lord Willbewill hired Harmless-Mirth to be both his waiting man and his lackey: and thus they got ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... break the bronze circle which they had described between creation and me, I wished to see what young people were like, for I knew nothing of man except the Marquis and Cristemio. Our coachman and the lackey who accompanies us are ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... "I think that lackey of yours will turn out a very useful fellow, Philip," Francois said, as they left the hall. "He is quick and willing, and he turned out our dinner yesterday in good fashion. It was certainly far better cooked than it had been, by ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... trip hup. The mud's no respecter h'of an H'english gentleman nor h'an American millionaire, don'cher know?" and the pompous Mr. Devonshire handed his hand-grip to Job, while he poked out his shoes for the gray-haired lackey ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... which after disasters must choke, plays prettily enough over their nude loveliness; for it is now the first half of the eighteenth century, and Casa Landi is the uninvaded sanctuary of Illustrissimi and Illustrissime. The resplendent porter who admits our melodious Abbate Carlo, and the gay lackey who runs before his smiling face to open the door of the sala where the company is assembled, may have had nothing to speak of for breakfast, but they are full of zeal for the grandeur they serve, and would not know what the rights of man were if you told them. They, too, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... I turned to glance at my deliverer, when a brawny fellow with fiery red hair, whose weapon had been wrenched from him in the fray, leaped at my throat. By the flame of a lackey's torch I saw he was as ugly a rascal as one would find in Paris. He had a huge mouth, with yellow, wolf-like teeth; his face was scarred in a dozen places; the bridge of his nose had at one time been broken, while the veins of his neck stood out like cords, A pair of tattered ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... on Gervais's shirt showed where his cousin's sword had been and would soon go again, and deeper. I had forgotten my bruise in my interest and delight, when, of a sudden, one whom we all had ignored took a hand in the game. Gervais's lackey started forward and knocked up Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and Gervais slashed his arm from ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... the farm-boys, and went into the kitchen and asked if Miss Fountain lived there. This question threw him into the hands of Jenny, who invited him to follow her, and, unlike your powdered and noiseless lackey, pounded the door with her fist, kicked it open with her foot, and announced him with that thunderbolt of language which fell so inopportunely on ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Monsieur Planterre, after what has occurred, not considering his life safe in the town, has come out here, but thought it wiser not to appear as a guest, lest it should be reported that I have entertained him. My people suppose him to be a lackey, as he acts the part to admiration; and he will take his departure to-morrow morning, without, I hope, being discovered, so that they will all be ready to declare that Monsieur Planterre has not ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston



Words linked to "Lackey" :   apple polisher, flatterer, fawner, goody-goody, ass-kisser, groveler, groveller, flunky, bootlicker, crawler, retainer, adulator, servant, truckler, toady, flunkey



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com