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Leer

verb
(past & past part. leered; pres. part. leering)
1.
Look suggestively or obliquely; look or gaze with a sly, immodest, or malign expression.



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"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books



... on it at night, my dear Prince," put in Doola, with a leer. "The clattering of the shields ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood

... drawled out the wood merchant, with a sort of leer on his yellow countenance, which clearly indicated that his wood was as good as sold, "wood's riz since you went down two weeks ago; besides, you are awar that you very seldom stop going down—when ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... come here, ye maiden vile, And rob me of my mate?' And on her child the mother scowled 80 A deadly leer of hate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... a peculiar harshness had crept into the other's voice. He glanced sharply at the old man's face. For the first time he noticed something sinister—yes, evil—in the leathery countenance; a stealthiness in the hard smile that seemed to transform it at once into a pronounced leer. Like a flash there darted into the American's active brain a conviction that there could be no common relationship between this flinty old man and the delicate, refined girl he had seen in the shop. Now he recalled the fact that her dark eyes had a look of sadness ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... in a heavy mantle, standing beside him. Sir Ulric thought he had never seen so hideous a hag as she who now stood gazing at him. She was wrinkled and toothless, and bent with age. One eye was shut, and in the other was a leer so horrible that he feared her some uncanny creature of the wood, and crossed himself ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... blow him up between us. There's my fist on it. See you soon," and, with a lurching step and a leer over ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... told her to see how she'd stare, and then I drugged her so she can't blab, out of that bottle I've seen you use, sir (with a cunning leer), more nor once. She wants to come with us, sir, she's so gone ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... the Man-in-the-Moon—looking right towards the combatants, as if he were standing in a trap-door of the sea, leaning forward leisurely with his arms complacently folded over upon the edge of the horizon—this queer face wore a serious, apishly self-satisfied leer, as if the Man-in-the-Moon had somehow secretly put up the ships to their contest, and in the depths of his malignant old soul was not unpleased to see how well his charms worked. There stood the grinning Man-in-the-Moon, his head just dodging into ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... Devil, when you come with horns and tail, With diabolic grin and crafty leer; I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail To waken in my heart a ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... place, but how about my principles, my conscience?" said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a serio-comic leer. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... in some subterranean place of vast dimensions, through the grim galleries of which men and women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash. Francis found himself accepting a courteously offered ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ways among men. Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star of the sea, We pray to the mother of God that the bound may be free. Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace, Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land, Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand. Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red! Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... and painting and books. His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer to him than the lady of the ivory frame. Who was the lady of the ivory frame? Gaston would have been happy to define with the leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and Philippa Cleve. Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire. If he continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities the ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... Leddy's leer at her on the pass, with its intent of something more horrible than murder. Savagery rose in her heart. It was right that he should be killed. He deserved his fate. But no sooner was the savagery born—born, she felt, of the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... slender, imperious judge in the council-chamber with a defiant leer on his face. If he went down into the depths he would drag with him the fairest treasure he had coveted in all his years ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... changeling laid. Where are the father's mouth and nose, The mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the vain conceited lie, That we the world with fools supply? What! give our sprightly race away, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... a walk in the country. (Tournour makes a leer of contempt) Do you never go for a walk in the ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... seems. I shut 'em up quick, feeling that no decent citizen could stand an' hear a pretty gal slandered like that. An' I'll tell you this, Miss Golden, you owe me something for the way I made 'em quit. Still," he added, with a leer, "I don't need payment. You see, I was ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... away down the rivers and find the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he, too, was ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's 40 wife: I spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... satisfied with the way I had done his boots," muttered the man, with an evil leer as he spat contemptuously on the floor; "an aristo, quoi? A hell of a place this... twenty cells to sweep out every day... and boots to clean for every aristo of a concierge or warder who demands it.... Is that work for a ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... across the quarterdeck at this dismissal, but as he put one leg over the gangway to get down to his boat, he said in a hoarse voice, and with a sly leer ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... young man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the tale for but one member. O'Hana San, condescend a rice ball for this Cho[u]bei. You, at least, know not the pinch of hunger.... Ah! She still possesses some of that beauty and charm for which Iemon has brought ruin upon all." Before the horrible lascivious leer of this object O'Hana fled. Left alone Iemon spoke. He had been thinking—"Cho[u]bei has spoken well. From Iemon he is entitled to relief. Cho[u]bei shall die on his mat. But in such shape nothing can be done. Get you hence. Buy clothing fit ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig's head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... a painted leer and predacious eyes pounced upon him, tore away his hat and coat, gave him a numbered slip of pasteboard by presenting which he would be permitted to ransom his ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion when he was ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... Dorsey greeted them hilariously and with a half-leer. "Howdy, Skinny! How's the Cimarron? Don't reckon you've taught Old Quicksilver to run yet, have you?" with a boisterous laugh as he referred to the race in which Thunderbolt had defeated Old Heck's ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... a triumphant leer at the calm face of Marguerite. She still did not feel really frightened, only puzzled and perturbed; but all the blood had rushed away from her face, leaving her cheeks ashen white, and pressing against her heart, until it ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... ye shoot an' git done?" barked Rowlett with a leer of desperation. "Pull yore trigger an' be damned ter ye—we'll meet in hell ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... she approaches; and I have seen them turn and contemplate ladies as they passed them, keeping a few paces in advance, with a leisurely sidelong gait. Something of this insolence might be forgiven to thoughtless, hot-blooded youth; but the gross and knowing leer that the elders of the Piazza and the caffe put on at the approach of a pretty girl is an ordeal which few women, not as thoroughly inured to it as the Venetians, would care to encounter. However, as I never heard the trial complained of by any but foreigners, I suppose it ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... meat when I want it, and my brother's company when I don't want it—for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... to find his late victim brandishing a revolver. An ugly leer crossed his face. He evidently meant business. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... passed on and found myself in the vicinity of Old Mortality and Monkbarns, who were deeply engaged in some antiquarian debate—too much so to notice the shrewd smile and cunning leer which the old Bluegown, Edie Ochiltree, now and then cast ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... Much more the worm to whom that man is meat. To glory some advance a lying claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... calico slip, with lots of jewels (sham), an immense colour in the very middle of the cheek, but terribly chalked just about the mouth, and shouting the "Soldier tired," with a most insinuating simper at the corporal of the Foot-guards in front, who returns the compliment by a most outrageous leer between each ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... yards, soundly sleeping. Some artillery-men chatted at doorsteps, with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the people of Alexandria were, in ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... impotent rage, P. Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... began to smell a rat. "This Trim," quoth she, "is an odd sort of a fellow; methinks he makes a strange figure with that ragged, tattered coat appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... to a huge shark, its triangular fin just above the surface, keeping two or three fathoms off, even with the boat, at which the monster every now and then, as he declared, gave a wicked leer. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... tried to leer at me, because his voice was absolutely dying in his throat. My indignation was boundless. I cried out with the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... many hit any higher spots than him. He bet there was one little girl that would be looked on as lucky, in case she was a good little girl and encouraged him to show his natural kindness. And I was favored with a blood-curdling leer from across the camp, of which I had put as much as possible between myself and the object ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. Ah, master, says the gipsy, that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you have not that simper about the mouth for nothing—The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed her ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... concerned. A station dinner is the very pinnacle of a priest's happiness. There is the fun and frolic; then does the lemon-juice of mirth and humor come out of their reverences, like secret writing, as soon as they get properly warm. The song and the joke, the laugh and the leer, the shaking of hands, the making of matches, and the projection of weddings,—och, I must conclude, or my brisk fancy will dissolve in the deluding vision! Here's to my celebrity to-morrow, and may the Bishop catch a Tartar in your son, my excellent and logical father!—as ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... als schdlich, der Geistlichkeit als gefhrlich, dem Staat als unzulssig erschienen mchte, daran hatten wir keinen Zweifel, und wir hofften, dieses Bchlein sollte nicht unwrdig die Feuerprobe bestauden haben. Allein wie hohl und leer ward uns in deiser tristen Atheistischen Halbnacht zu Mute, in welcher die Erde mit allen ihren Gebilden, der Himmel mit allen seinen Gestirnen verschwand! Eine Materie sollte sein von Ewigkeit und von ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... sir," he replied, allowing himself a prideful leer; "if I do say it as shouldn't, I'm an ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... there, one of which had rather an ugly bulge by the side near the toes. His mouth was exceedingly wide, and his nose remarkably long; its extremity of a deep purple; upon his features was a half-simple smile or leer; in his hand was a long stick. After we had all taken a full view of one another I said in Welsh, addressing myself to the man in grey, "Pray may I take the liberty of asking the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk— The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: Growling, obscene ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... came Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... so fortunate as to sit opposite a gentleman, who nodded and grinned at him all dinner with a horrible leer. He could not, however, enjoy this to the full for a little distraction at his elbow: his right hand neighbour kept forking pieces out of his plate and substituting others from his own. There was even a tendency ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... degree. Sirs, I manetane that this is infernul nonsense. I manetane that wax figgers is more elevatin than awl the plays ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't she, a puttin old Mack, her husband, up ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was the Laureate's companion he was saluted with nearly equal courtesy. The old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly convinced that his opinion on all affairs was ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the other ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... pantaloons had also once belonged to some full grown specimen of humanity, but had been torn off to suit the dimensions of the present owner—and, altogether, the appearance of this miserable object, with his one blind eye, and the cunning leer in the other, was calculated to excite both pity and disgust. The brothers looked upon him for a moment in mute astonishment, until again startled by that squeaking, supplicating voice—"Un picayune, Monsieur—one picayune to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... the hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... laughed harshly. "Look here, my chick," said he, with an ugly leer, "you're comin' wi' us; that's settled, so you may stow yer cheek an' hurry up, or it'll ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... short in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... encased in lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent Club," where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to whom he tells ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... him any explanation, only stood guarding the door with a threatening aspect, which very much disconcerted Pee-wee. He was a scout and he was brave, and not panicky in peril or emergency, but the striped clothing and cropped head and stupid leer of the man before him made him seem something less than human. His terror was more that of an animal than of a man and his apparent inability to express himself save by the repetition of that one sentence frightened ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... enough to see you through?" and what the judge intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... a leer and drove them before him back to the table. There was more scratching in his register. The two uncouth witnesses scrawled something for ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... He began to leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense Marion made haste to bring his ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... smelled before, but I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was a lactone, and let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did; there was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going; I just went ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness

... liebe vollen becher, Und trinkt ihn froelich leer; In Gauz Europa ihr herren zecher, Ist solch, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... world but stand by and see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... to the daughter. The older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would have ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... the floor in assumed exhaustion, a Chinaman with a perfectly impassive face, and a Burman, whose pock-marked, evil countenance was set in an apparently habitual leer, came running into ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... was called annealing, and the oven with a movable floor was technically denominated a leer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... grubs, which, together with the chrysalides and the full-grown beetle (brown and glossy) were devoured after being warmed through on the ashes. When the tomahawk in the process of cutting out damaged a grub, Mickie with a leer of satisfaction would eat the wriggling insect with a feigned apology—"Me bin cut that fella." Baked in the ashes the chrysalids have a wholesome, clean appearance, with a flavour of coco-nut, and the "white fella" always came in for ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... hath wrought, Worm-like vapours skirr thro' the halls And reach a distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought— More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene. And stationed Mounts ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large gown and bands over beard and hide; and pour a dozen of lavender-water ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... friend," added the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... reserve? Why should you pretend not to understand? Don't you see," he added, with a cunning leer, "that I can make these medals as perfectly as they can at the Hotel de la Monnaie, ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... remark with a chuckle of intense satisfaction and a leer at our big neighbour, Bob dived below again; and shortly afterwards a frizzling sound from forward, and an odour strongly suggestive of bacon and eggs, which was wafted upwards from the companion, informed me that he had entered ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... waiting for Nurse Cavell's death to say, "Now you can bring me the American protest," has gone behind the moustache to the face, and behind the face to the type and the spirit. The Emperor is not commanding in a lordly voice from a throne, but with a leer and behind a curtain. In the few lines of the lean, unnatural face is written the real history of the Hohenzollerns, the kind of history not often touched on in our comfortable English humour, but common to the realism ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... he had gone long ago, but the hooked-nosed buzzard couldn't leave without satisfyin' his curiosity. "What do you reckon was the reason your friend wouldn't let himself be examined?" sez he, with a leer. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... was thoroughly wholesome. Even his occasionally free utterances on sexuality are only sins against decorum. They do not violate nature. He never spoke on this subject with the slobbery grin of the voluptuary, or the leer of prurience. He was at such moments simply unreticent. Meaning no harm, he suspected none. In this respect he belonged to a less self-conscious antiquity, when nothing pertaining to man was common or unclean, and even the worship ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... my Uncle John, who was dancing attendance on her with the leer of a satyr, "please do not let me disturb this lady. I am so troubled about the anxiety I must be causing my father and my friends at the present moment, that I could not really stop here. All I ask is that she will be kind ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go yourself, Mr. ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... enclosure Bakahenzie and the other two were arrested by astonishment. Lowering the body to the base of the idol which leaned sideways in a drunken leer, Birnier lifted the spear and brought it down accurately between zu Pfeiffer's left arm and breast, and dropping swiftly upon his knees to cover his actions, slashed his own left forearm. Then he jumped to his feet and held the blooded spear ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... in the tenement, and, naturally enough then, was beginning his investigation with the ground floor room. And yet, why then had the Wolf, deliberately in that case, sent his pack off on a false scent? In the mirror he could see that huge jaw outthrust, the black eyes narrowed, an ugly leer on the working face—and a revolver in the Wolf's hand that held a bead on ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... he, "that's nothing. Would ye believe me now, that before the Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could shoot? Ay, could I!" cries he, and then with a leer: "If ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye how ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scare the birds away, O'er his poor seeds set up, to leer and ogle, A raffish moon-face, stuffed with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... to be Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... apparently sugar of lead; really, it was sugar of milk—the milk of human kindness. The smile of the lost picture called "La Gioconda" is by fanciful people regarded as something very wonderful. It is really the clever portraiture of the habitual "leer" of a somewhat wearied sensual woman. It had a fascination for the great Leonardo, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... however, was Mac's leer, which, in a public hall, would have brought down the house, and which I feel ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... medleys for which you improvise absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing and dispensing the jolly red wine. All grow rapidly merry, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph at having ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... performance. Another painting showed a poor wretch being knouted to death in the market-place of a Russian town, and yet another showed a young and beautiful woman in a prison cell with her face distorted by the horrible leer of madness, and her little white hands clawing nervously at her long ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... sight, optics, eyesight. view, look, espial^, glance, ken [Scot.], coup d'oeil [Fr.]; glimpse, glint, peep; gaze, stare, leer; perlustration^, contemplation; conspection^, conspectuity^; regard, survey; introspection; reconnaissance, speculation, watch, espionage, espionnage [Fr.], autopsy; ocular inspection, ocular demonstration; sight-seeing. point of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... expression of the house made to look like morning. Some of the guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs. One or two went to the door, and gazed along the street more than once. Tinker Taylor was the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... time, and thought best to leave it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the sailors whom she had never spoken to came by, and leaning over towards her with a leer as ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... thus gossiped was a young man, Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, by name, who, when Bernabo thus concluded his eulogy of his wife, broke out into a mighty laugh, and asked him with a leer, whether he of all men had this privilege by special patent of the Emperor. Bernabo replied, somewhat angrily, that 'twas a boon conferred upon him by God, who was rather more powerful than the Emperor. To which Ambrogiuolo rejoined:—"I make no doubt, Bernabo, that thou believest that ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death another and more ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... the door of a large spacious inn, two ladies who had very much the appearance of the two damsels at the inn where Don Quixote alighted and received his order of knighthood; but, in spite of their amorous glances and a decided leer of invitation, I had like Sacripante's steed more need of "riposo e d'esca che di nuova giostra." The usual Italian supper was put before us, and very good it was, viz., Imprimis: A minestra (soup), generally made of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. His humility and deference to both ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... herself in the entrance where she had a view of both men, saw the cruel leer that accompanied Walcott's words and understood their significance as her father did not. Her hand sought the bosom of her dress for an instant, then dropped quietly at her side, but swift as the movement was, her companion ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... magnificent to be such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made use of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... day of judgment in their revelation of character. Titian's splendid harmonies of scarlet silk and crimson satin and gold brocade and purple velvet and silvery fur enshrine many a blend of villainies and brutal stupidities. What is more cruelly realistic than the leer of the satyr clothed as Francis, King of France; than the bovine dullness of Charles V and the lizard-like dullness of his son; or than that strange combination of wolfish cunning and swinish bestiality with human thought and self-command ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith



Words linked to "Leer" :   scorn, face, aspect, expression, facial expression, leery, look, sneer, contempt



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