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Toothless   /tˈuθləs/   Listen
Toothless

adjective
1.
Lacking teeth.  "A toothless old crone"
2.
Lacking necessary force for effectiveness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Toothless" Quotes from Famous Books



... protestations gradually died down to an occasional gulp like that of a naughty child. Making soothing sounds and patting their breasts and our own in turn, in sign of friendship, we had plenty of time to inspect them. An old lady, with grizzled hair, toothless and distorted in countenance, with legs and arms mere bones, and skin shrunken and parched; a girl-child, perhaps six years old, by no means an ugly little thing, and a youngish man made up the trio; ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... Station. Then Needle Rock—a desolate hut on the Desert, house and barn in one building. The station-keeper is a miserable, toothless wretch, with shaggy yellow hair, but says he's going to get married. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... strike the rich 'lead' which was supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere. 'There's gold in them ridges yet—if a man can only git at it,' says the toothless old relic ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... and beheld a tiny, bent old woman, all enveloped in grey rags. The old woman's face was visible from beneath them: a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... and toothless, yet with all the remains of great beauty, sits cowering over this hidden turf fire, mumbling to herself, it may be, of golden days now past and gone, when she had been the fairest colleen at mass or pattern, and had counted her lovers by the score. Yea, those were good old times, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... no meaning spread the page, In which all comprehension wanders, lost, While fields of pleasantry amuse us there With many descants on a nation's woes. The rest appears a wilderness of strange, But gay confusion—roses for the cheeks, And lilies for the brows of faded age; Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald, Heav'n, earth, and ocean, plunder'd of their sweets; Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, Sermons and City feasts, and fav'rite airs, Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits, And Katerfelto with his hair on end, At his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... exclaimed Lydia. Begging Indians were no novelty to Lake City children, but this one was so old and thin that Lydia was horrified. Toothless, her black hair streaked with gray, her calico dress unspeakably dirty, her hands like birds' claws clasping her stick, the squaw stopped ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years. Yes, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... walls of the rambling buildings. On the fourth side, facing the sea, the dusty road wound east toward Megara. Here, by the gate, were gathered a rustic company: brown-faced village lads and lasses, toothless graybeards, cackling old wives. Above the barred gate swung a festoon of ivy, whilst from within the court came the squeaking of pipes, the tuning of citharas, and shouted orders—signs of a mighty bustling. Then even while the company grew, a half-stripped courier flew up ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... will, sir; for I am main and happy. Just before you came in now, I had really forgotten that I was a toothless old man, and thought I was lying here waiting for my mother to come in and say good-night to me before I went to sleep. Wasn't that curious, when I never saw my mother, as I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... see whether the rigid manners of the old housekeeper would soften a little at the sight of the young girl. I saw her turning her lustreless eyes upon Jeanne; I saw her long wrinkled face, her toothless mouth, and that pointed chin of hers— like the chin of some puissant old fairy. And that was all ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connexions, be they distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any) eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen, and with a hide outrivalling in colour and plaits his trimmest saffron robe. At the mention of this indeed, friend Plato, even thou, although resolved ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... Is it this woman who stands in my way, then? Toothless and grinning, crouched low over a stick, rags and tatters and wisps ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... roll'd, The gaudy conch with azure, green, and gold. You round Echinus ray his arrowy mail, Give the keel'd Nautilus his oar and sail; Firm to his rock with silver cords suspend 70 The anchor'd Pinna, and his Cancer-friend; With worm-like beard his toothless lips array, And teach the unwieldy Sturgeon to betray.— Ambush'd in weeds, or sepulcher'd in sands, In dread repose He waits the scaly bands, 75 Waves in red spires the living lures, and draws The unwary plunderers to his circling jaws, Eyes with grim joy the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... in which all the bones stood out, joined by prominent muscles, which gave it the look of the head of an anatomical model. On the bridge of the nose, a pair of copper-rimmed spectacles. Across the face, like a gash, the toothless, grinning mouth. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... morning to night, in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions circumscribed within the narrowest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... meaning spread the page, In which all comprehension wanders lost; While fields of pleasantry amuse us there With merry descants on a nation's woes. The rest appears a wilderness of strange But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks, And lilies for the brows of faded age, Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald, Heaven, earth, and ocean, plunder'd of their sweets, Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, Sermons, and city feasts, and fav'rite airs, Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits. And Katerfelto, with his hair on end At his own ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... Tom, they never gave me a moment's Pain, for the Truth is, I was too proud to be affronted, and had too high a Spirit to be humbled, by such Insults, or else indeed I had met with Opportunities enough to make me pass my Time very uneasily. But in the next place those who Writ against me, were mere toothless Animals, or at least a Sort of Irish Vipers, that tho' they lov'd to Bite, yet they wanted the pungent Venom which gives the Torment. Many of their Tracts were the poorest Productions that ever disgraced ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... bar to civil conversation. Other "gudemen and gudewives," as the farmers and their dames are termed in Scotland, successively presented themselves to his imagination. But one was deaf, and could not hear him; another toothless, and could not make him hear; a third had a cross temper; and a fourth an ill-natured house-dog. At Monkbarns or Knockwinnock he was sure of a favourable and hospitable reception; but they lay too distant to be conveniently reached ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... would have screamed, a hand was clapped over her mouth, breaking her false teeth, and all her stifled shrieks, queries and expostulations were literally cuffed into a whimper. Five minutes later, toothless, half-dressed and trembling, she thrust a few things into a dressing-case, struggled into a fur coat, and passed with sagging knees downstairs, clinging to the arm of a bully whom she ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... and high silk hat, the latter banded with crimson ribbon, came into sight down the field. It was the old fruit seller of Harwell, whose years are beyond reckoning, and who is remembered by the oldest graduates. On he came, his old, wrinkled face grimacing in toothless smiles, his ribboned cane waving in his trembling hand, and his well-nigh bald head bowing a welcome to the watchers. For it was not he who was the guest, for from time almost immemorial the old fruit seller ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that of an old fowl, had brought his face into the light. It was long, and run to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips were twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth; and his eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into a thin rim round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the films over parrots' eyes. He was, or should have been, clean-shaven. His hair—for he had taken off his hat was thick and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... See where the sun sets Ere he sets, ere old age Seizeth me in the morass, Ere my toothless jaws mumble, And my useless limbs totter; While drunk with his farewell beam Hurl me,—a fiery sea Foaming still in mine eye,— Hurl me, while dazzled and reeling, Down to ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... up to the old man and whispered something in his ear. The wrinkled face cracked into a hideous grin that showed his almost toothless gums. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn coverlet, with his face turned towards a wasting candle that stood upon a table by his side. His right hand was raised to his lips, and as, absorbed in thought, he hit his long black nails, he disclosed among his toothless gums a few such fangs as should have been a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... terrified three thousand Archers with his shouts; he would have pierced the whole line of the enemy with his shafts. Ah! but if you will not leave the aged in peace, decree that the advocates be matched; thus the old man will only be confronted with a toothless greybeard, the young will fight with the braggart, the ignoble with the son of Clinias[228]; make a law that in future, the old man can only be summoned and convicted at the courts by the aged and the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... returning the polite salutes of early rising grand-sires who uncovered their grey heads, or wrinkled, pink-faced grandmothers, who waved kerchiefs from gabled windows beneath the thatch and smiled the straight and dry-lipped smile of toothless age as they wished us good ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... the soup in silence and finished their meal with a small scrap of bacon. The citoyenne, putting her titbit on her bread, used the point of her pocket knife to convey the pieces one by one slowly and solemnly to her toothless jaws and masticated with a proper reverence the victuals ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... classification these animals would not come together, since many of the species are unlike the others both in appearance and habits; but in a scientific point of view the absence of incisor teeth has caused them to be ranged together in a group, known as the edentata, or toothless animals. ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... times by captains of British armed ships, these poor old "dogs of war," thus toothless and turned out to die, formerly bayed in full pack as the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... bluntness &c adj.. V. be blunt, render blunt &c adj.; obtund^, dull; take off the point, take off the edge; turn. Adj. blunt, obtuse, dull, bluff; edentate, toothless. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... lasts for many consecutive weeks, has just commenced. The first important crop that ripens is the turnip,—which is now being cut. The work is performed by the use of grass-hooks or toothless sickles; stem after stem is cut, until the hand is full, when they are deposited in canvas sheets; as these are filled, boys stand ready to spread others; men follow to tie up those which have been filled; others succeed, driving teams, and loading wagons, with ample shelvings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... would be vexed— and surely he would not vex his hostess. To this wilful chant the doctor contributed his burden of "Che! che! S'accommodi!" and rapped with his knife-handle upon the table. Old Nonna, toothless, bearded and scared, popped her head beyond the kitchen door; to be short, insistence went to a point where good manners could not follow. Mr. Francis sat himself down, and Donna Aurelia, clapping her little hands, cried aloud that ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... easier work honouring a fair damsel, with golden hair and rose-leaf cheek, than a toothless old harridan that is for ever ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... on the waters; then he was rescued by a huge eagle that carried him on its back to Pohyola, the dismal Sariola, and left him on a barren promontory, where he bemoaned his unhappy fate. Here he was found by Louhi, the toothless dame of Pohyola, who took him home and fed him. Then she promised to provide him with a sledge that he might journey safely home if he would forge for her the Sampo, a magical jewel that gave success to its possessor. If he could make her this, she would also ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... is toothless, the jaws resembling the beak of a turtle, and in some species both the upper and the lower jaws have medial sutures like those of a snake. Was there not a Roman statesman or warrior whose jaws were fitted with a consolidated and continuous structure of ivory instead ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... bitches' whelps that snatched Their food and bit the hand that nourished them, Have stolen her. You ingrate Henry Greene, I picked you from the gutter of Houndsditch, And paid your debts, and kept you in my house, And brought you here to make a man of you! You Robert Juet, ancient, crafty man, Toothless and tremulous, how many times Have I employed you as a master's mate To give you bread? And you Abacuck Prickett, You sailor-clerk, you salted puritan, You knew the plot and silently agreed, Salving your conscience with a pious lie! Yes, all of you—hounds, rebels, thieves! Bring back My ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... there, and lashes, Precocious hags! The world's but dust and ashes. Wrinkles and crowsfeet next must have their turn (To limn them in let toilette artists learn), Then make each belle bald, scraggy-necked and toothless, Grey hair alone won't make Society youthless. Let belles turn beldams if they find it jolly. But they might be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various

... he said at last with a rough, toothless bass voice. "Do fine young men behave like that? If Petka did not steal the watch, that is one thing; but if he did, then I'll give it to him with the stick, as they used to do in the regiment. What is that? 'What a pity!' The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... charnel-house. Death in its most horrible forms was there,—from starvation, from corruption, scurvy, lock-jaw, gangrene, consumption, and fever. How ghastly the scene! Men, once robust and strong, weak and helpless as babes, with hollow cheeks, toothless gums, thin pale lips, colorless flesh, sunken eyes, long, tangled hair, uncombed for many months, skeleton fingers with nails like eagles' claws, lying in rags upon the deck,—some, with strained eyes, looking up for the last time to the dear old flag which waved above them, for which they had ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... skin tanned like leather, and kindly little blue eyes, twinkling with delight and pride. Yes, there they are, photographed somewhere in my brain, the wrinkled, yellow, withered faces of the two old women, their watery eyes and toothless mouths, with figures as shapeless as the bowlders on the beach, watching beside the bed where lay the white but tenderly beautiful face of the young girl, with her curls of glossy hair tossed about the pillow, and her long, tremulous eyelashes making ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... toothless variety used by the softer-hearted landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums. There were also the intermediate ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... one-quarter of the children are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred people, of whom twenty-seven ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... confused. I see a little toothless head. From out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, but touching and almost melodious. The man who lies ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... as I was washing up, And just had rinsed the final cup, All of a sudden, 'midst the steam, I fell asleep and dreamt a dream. I saw myself an old, old man, Nearing the end of mortal span, Bent, bald and toothless, lean and spare, Hunched in an ancient beehive chair. Before me stood a little lad Alive with questions. "Please, Granddad, Did Daddy fight, and Uncle Joe, In the Great War of long ago?" I nodded as I made reply: "Your Dad was in the H.L.I., And Uncle Joseph sailed the sea, Commander ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... coiffures were so unwashed that they emitted a sickening odour. I ordered them not to come too near us, for although these females had no claims whatever to beauty—and, as far as I could see they possessed no other charm—one being old and toothless, the other with a skin like a lizard, they actually tried to decoy us to their tents, possibly with the object of getting us robbed by their men. My men seemed little attracted by the comical speeches and gestures with which they sought to beguile us, and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... we were concerned to find that many of the draught cattle were very aged; they were, it was true, in health; but younger animals undoubtedly ought to have been procured; for of little use could toothless, old, and blind beasts ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... woman came hobbling out to greet her with a toothless smile. "Ah, bella signorina, there are no more letters for you to-night. Have you come to talk to me for ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... tracks, his mind a medley of irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of everything he had seen that morning. He remembered every feature of both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all of his fellow passengers on the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at hand, worked ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... of the building where, among old, toothless women, semi-imbecile girls—the relicts of error, the heirs of affliction—three babies of one mother were in charge of a strong, rosy Irish nurse. Two of them, twins, were in her lap, and a third upon the floor halloaing for joy. Such noble ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... claim that she is over a hundred years old. How old she really is, it would be impossible to know, for such things were not kept track of so long ago. She speaks no English. When asked about her age she merely shrugs her small shrunken shoulders, draws her shawl around them, and with a pleasant toothless smile, says: "O, I never know that, but I remember a ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... war hath no array, At which this heart can tremble; no device Nor blazonry of battle can inflict The wounds they menace; crests and clashing bells Without the spear are toothless, and the night, Wrought on yon buckler with the stars of heaven, Prophet, perchance, his doom; and if dark Death Close round his eyes, are but the ominous signs Of the black night ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... He danced, at times skipping boldly, and then dropping his little bald head with his scraggy neck stretched out as if he were dying, stamping his feet on the ground, and sometimes bending his knees with obvious difficulty. A voice cracked with age came from his toothless mouth. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... strike. O son, this breast Pillowed thine head full oft, while, drowsed with sleep, Thy toothless mouth drew ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... Mr. Alderman March Hare here," continued the Hatter, "that we should legislate in the matter, and at our last session we passed a law providing for the Municipal Ownership of Teeth, so that now when a toothless wanderer wants a hickory nut cracked he has a perfectly legal right to stop anybody in the street who has teeth and make him crack the nut for him. Of course we've had a little trouble enforcing the law—alleged private rights are always difficult to get around. Long-continued ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... at that time did not know her neighbours as well as she later learned to know them. Becky came nearer, and her thin lips curled back from her toothless jaws. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... peremptory guide from the narrow street into what appeared to be a spacious court, but as the only light it received was from a blinking candle in the window of the conciergerie, I could not determine. After exchanging some cabalistic sentences with a toothless old woman, the proprietor of the candle, Afra turned to the right, and walking a few steps came to a door opening on a stairway, which we mounted. I can think of nothing black enough for comparison with the darkness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... mind. Raising himself and pointing with an imperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he uttered the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had never been loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. "Wanting the hat," continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sheer exuberance of her own physical vigour: "Only that old and toothless nemesis of Loki can slay me, John Estridge!" And, to Palla: "I had some slight trouble in Stockholm. Fancy!—a little shrimp of a man approached me on the street one evening when there ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... foe. Warriors of courage do not wish to strike them that run away with speed. That is another reason why the routed foe should not be pursued hotly. Things that are immobile are devoured by those that are mobile; creatures that are toothless are devoured by those that have teeth; water is drunk by the thirsty; cowards are devoured by heroes. Cowards sustain defeat though they have, like the victors, similar backs and stomachs and arms and legs. They that are afflicted with fear bend their heads and joining their hands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy. "Ha!" said he, laughing through his false teeth (I declare they were false—I could see utterly toothless gums working up and down behind the pink coral), "you see I wore a beard den; I am shafed now; perhaps you tink I am A SPOON. Ha, ha!" And as he laughed he gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... we went. She explained to me that on Sundays she wore bonnet and mantle after the fashion of a bourgeoise; in other words, she dressed like a lady, but that neither in summer nor winter at any other time did she cover her head. She was a pleasant-mannered, intelligent, affable woman, almost toothless, as are so many well-to-do middle-aged folks in France. Dentists must fare badly throughout the country. No one ever seems to have a guinea to spend ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... place to stand, and lifts his bleary eyes, And smiles a bit—a toothless smile half touched, perhaps, with fear; And though he cannot see them he is looking at the skies, As if he prays, but silently, for hope and faith ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... particular 'positive' is natural. We say that that is capable of some particular faculty or possession has suffered privation when the faculty or possession in question is in no way present in that in which, and at the time at which, it should naturally be present. We do not call that toothless which has not teeth, or that blind which has not sight, but rather that which has not teeth or sight at the time when by nature it should. For there are some creatures which from birth are without sight, or without teeth, but these are ...
— The Categories • Aristotle

... theory, which he practised on others, was that one must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club. At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the starved horses ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... powwow, borrowing files to saw off the barrels of their muskets short. A French woman, who has visited the Indians across the river for a supply of maple sugar, comes to Gladwin on May 5 with the same story. From eight hundred, the Indians increase to two thousand. Old Catherine, a toothless squaw, comes shaking as with the palsy to the fort, and with mumbling words warns Gladwin to "Beware, beware!" So does a young girl whose fine eyes have caught the fancy of Gladwin himself. Breaking out with bitter weeping, she covers her head with her shawl and bids her white lover ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... tower of the Hotel de Ville, and wondered whether it would not be possible to "get up" something like it in San Francisco. He stood for half an hour in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminent danger from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old cicerone mumble in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names of these gentlemen—for reasons best known to himself—on the back of an ...
— The American • Henry James

... delicatessen store, and consume nearly as much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the middle of the floor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking slowly from side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of toothless and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... and he himself was married to the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a lady described as "plain, but exemplary." Still, so far as personal appearance goes, Ludwig himself was no Adonis. Nestitz, indeed, has pictured him as "having a toothless jaw and an expressionless countenance." But his consort did her duty; and, at approved intervals, presented him with a quiverful of four sons and three daughters. Of his sons, one of them, Otto, was, as a lad of sixteen, selected by the Congress of London to be King of Greece, much to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... boys, or listened to the tales about Pugachev told by a half-witted old woman living in a mud hut, greedily drinking in the most singular of the horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman's toothless mouth and into the caverns of ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... strewn with roses, the world is at your feet. Slam! 'Scene III.' In a moment twenty years have passed; your hair is grey, you are matronly, stout, your face is no longer oval; yet unmistakably it is you yourself, the same woman. Slam! 'Scene IV.' You are enfeebled, a crone, toothless, tottering on a stick. Once more! It is the last effect—the door flies open and ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... weekdays and Sundays. The luncheon, too, is rarely inspired: they eat cold joint of beef with pickled beetroot, or mutton and boiled potatoes, with unfailing regularity, finishing off at most hotels with semolina pudding, a concoction intended for, and appealing solely to, the taste of the toothless infant, who, having just graduated from rubber rings, has ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a sweep of them," he said, and as a terrible figure, all rags and sores, with blind red eyes and toothless mouth rose croaking and entreating from the ditch by the road, the servant pointed with tight lips and solemn eyes to Hangman's Acre. Chris fumbled in his purse, threw a couple of groats on to the ground, and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... sketched a kind of conversation piece, representing a bear, an owl, a monkey, and an ass; and to render it more striking, humorous, and moral, distinguished every figure by some emblem of human life. Bruin was exhibited in the garb and attitude of an old, toothless, drunken soldier; the owl perched upon the handle of a coffee-pot, with spectacle on nose, seemed to contemplate a newspaper; and the ass, ornamented with a huge tie-wig (which, however, could not conceal his ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... my owners instructions to send all the ship's apprentices away on leave together, because in such weather there was nothing for anybody to do, unless to keep up a fire in the cabin stove. That was attended to by a snuffy and mop-headed, inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper, who could hardly speak three words of English, but who must have had some considerable knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably to interpret in the contrary sense everything that was said ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... he had ever laughed. "Auld Girnie" they called him, because of his habit of always finding fault with everything and everybody, for no one could please him. His mouth seemed to be one long slit extending across his face, showing one or two stumps sticking in the otherwise toothless gums, and giving him ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... shriveled in his face, is balnicitakya, the body covered with wrinkles; pareimenos tas knmas, weak in his knees, is pravedhayamna{h} sarvngapratyangai{h}, trembling in all his limbs; sunkekuphs, bent, is kubja; pepolimenos, gray, is palitake{s}a; estermenos tous odontas, toothless, is kha{n}{d}adanta; enkekomena laln, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... heaved in his toothless laugh. "Seven o'clock," he said scornfully. "Yew look through a knot-hole in your floor any mornin' when it's handy to four o'clock and yew'll ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... she mused, "were I a thousand years old, wrinkled and toothless, he would still look upon me as ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the book narrates how a young volunteer came up to him and saluted. The appearance of his face was so tensely white that the officer enquires, "Are you afraid?" Suddenly a stream of blood bursts from the young man's body, and his deadly pale face turns into something unspeakable, a toothless laugh—the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... smiling aspect, where the hills and cliffs with their romantic ruined castles rise more defiantly, and a wilder, sterner majesty prevails, there lies, like a strange and fearful tale of olden times, the gloomy and ancient town of Bacharach. But these walls, with their toothless battlements and blind turrets, in whose nooks and niches the winds whistle and the sparrows build their nests, were not always so decayed and fallen, and in these poverty-stricken, repulsive muddy lanes which one sees through the ruined gate, there did not always reign that dreary silence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... world in the northern temperate zone—both in its seas and fresh waters; although, when you go farther south into the warmer climate, no sturgeons exist. I am sure there are some here, perhaps more than one species. Sink your bait for the sturgeon is a toothless fish, and feeds upon soft substances at ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... an old toothless hag with a vicious leer. 'What are you doing here? You've not been in for ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... pony and a servant in constant readiness, in order to follow and ascertain the residence of any fair girl whose attractions particularly caught his fancy! At this period the old man was deaf with one ear, blind with one eye, nearly toothless, and labouring under multiplied infirmities. But the hideous propensities of his prime still pursued him when all enjoyment was impossible. Can there be a greater penalty ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... admitted into the Foreign Office at one o'clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doors fly open before the heiress of Mr. Allegre. She has inherited the old friends, the old connections . . . Of course, if she were a toothless old woman . . . But, you see, she isn't. The ushers in all the ministries bow down to the ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums take on an eager tone when they say, 'Faites entrer.' My mother ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs—toothless and wrinkled, yet not a man of them over fifty-eight—stood around in expectant silent clusters, and also in their best clothes, of which a great deal of faded red neck-tie and pepper and salt trousers seemed ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... feigned anger, crying: "What foolishness is this? Am I old, that thou shouldst mate me with old women? Am I toothless? lame of leg? blind of eye? Or am I poor that no bright-eyed maiden may look with favour upon me? Behold! I am the Factor, both rich and great, a power in the land, whose speech makes men tremble and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... is pictured in the form of an old man with an aged face and sunken, toothless mouth. He is frequently characterized by a long, pendent head ornament, in which is the sign Akbal, darkness, night, which also appears in his hieroglyph before the forehead of the deity, surrounded by dots as an indication of the starry sky. His name-hieroglyph is Fig. 17, and a second ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... Miss Huff settled in a pleasant street in a good comfortable home, not so very fur away from the Fair ground. She's a widder with one son, young and good lookin', jest home from school; and a aged parent, toothless and no more hair on his head than on the cover of my glass butter dish. And I'll be hanged if I knowed which one on 'em Blandina paid the most devoted attention to whilst we wuz there, but nothin' light ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought:' and whilst uttering these words ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... butler's pantry. I met a servant at a public-house, who is going away, a sea chap, drinking malt like a fish, and I wormed all out of him. I think it be an easy job. The butler be fat and pursey. The Admiral be old and toothless. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... Pam's toothless gums grinned appreciation of the jest as he tottered from the room to take a chair for a rout at ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... white hair which a painter would gladly have paid four francs an hour to copy,—a dazzling mass of snow, worn like that in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy to guess from the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the lines of the mouth, that the toothless old fellow was more given to the bottle than the trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening expression to his profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The eyes, too small for his enormous face, and sloping like those of a pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness; ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... pretty well filled, though there were some empty boxes, sights more hideous in the eyes of actors than toothless mouths. We sat with Madame la Baronne de ——-, and nearly opposite was Madame ——-, related to the "Principe de la Paz," a handsome woman, with a fine Bohemian cast of face, dark in complexion, with glittering teeth, brilliant eyes, and dark hair. La Castellan sang very ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... Inside the wreckage, soldiers crouched with rifles ready at the peek-holes. A Reckitt's bluing factory was burning, and across the field were the Germans. The cottages without doors and windows were like toothless old women. Piles of used cartridges were strewed around. There stood a gray motor-car, a wounded German in the back seat, his hands riddled, the car shot through, with blood in the bottom from two dead Germans. I realized the power of the bullet, ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... household—she could not, indeed, move a step without assistance. Her sole occupation was to sit in the attic window and gaze over the sands upon the sea, smiling hopefully, yet with a touch of sadness in the smile; mouthing her toothless gums, and muttering now and then as if to herself, "He'll come soon now." Her usual attitude was that of one who ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... nicknamed Canny, and a young Tatar, whom no one knew by name, were sitting on the river-bank by the camp-fire; the other three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of sixty, lean and toothless, but broad shouldered and still healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone in to sleep long before, but he had a bottle in his pocket and he was afraid that the fellows in the hut would ask him for vodka. The Tatar ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... at the Court nobody except the bald and toothless marries, except for fortune. There are plenty of lovers, but no husbands. Because she is poor she is passed about in the family, sometimes as lady of honour to the Princess, sometimes to the Marechale de ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... of delicious broth to his lips, and their toothless mouths had kindly lines about them. He heard their high ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... none, not even Odin and his Asa-folk. They all grow old and gray; and, if there were no cure for age, they would become feeble, and toothless and blind, deaf, tottering, and weak-minded. The apples which Idun guarded so carefully were the priceless boon of youth. Whenever the Asas felt old age coming on, they went to her, and she gave them of her fruit; ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... says the economist of the proprietary school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... sea which held sway over our western plains. Ornithostoma's spread of wings was twenty feet. Its bones were a marvel of lightness, the entire skeleton, even in its petrified condition, not weighing more than five or six pounds. The sharp beak, a yard long, was toothless and bird-like, as ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... and cast forth a toothless spear and vain, That forthwith from the griding brass was put aback all spent, And from the shield-boss' outer skin hung down, for nothing sent. Then Pyrrhus cried: 'Yea tell him this, go take the tidings down To Peleus' son my father then, of Pyrrhus worser grown ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... distinguished down below at our feet, where the morning had not yet reached it. Grasping his abundant clothing by handsful, he squatted and wriggled. It was Papa Blaire. His little eyes blinked among the dust that luxuriated on his face. Above the gap of his toothless mouth, his mustache made a heavy sallow lump. His hands were horribly black, the top of them shaggy with dirt, the palms plastered in gray relief. Himself, shriveled and dirtbedight, exhaled the scent of an ancient stewpan. Though busily scratching, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... During the puasa, or fast of ramadan, the Mahometans among them abstain from the use of betel whilst the sun continues above the horizon; but excepting at this season it is the constant luxury of both sexes from an early period of childhood, till, becoming toothless, they are reduced to the necessity of having the ingredients previously reduced to a paste for them, that without further effort the betel may dissolve in the mouth. Along with the betel, and generally in the chunam, is the mode of conveying ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... on either side, a face looked out upon the flying streets—a fairy with gentle eyes and a crone with toothless smile. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... Having arrived there, they put up their horses at a small hostelry in the Grassmarket; and, next day, Will, leaving his friends at the inn, repaired to that seat of the law and learning of Scotland, where the "hail fifteen" sat in grim array, munching, with their toothless jaws, the thousand scraps of Latin law-maxims (borrowed from the Roman and feudal systems) which then ruled the principles of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... from that solitude I drew, and, of his change compassionate, With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood. But he, while pride and fear held deep debate, With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate 1940 Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare: Pity, not scorn I felt, though desolate The desolator now, and unaware The curses which he mocked had caught ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them. One old gentleman had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between. Suddenly he choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... violently, and bestowed a toothless but affectionate grin upon the wearer of the fascinating, swaying lace, before he disappeared with the ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... three feet high, when we spied from the deck a black object, very conspicuous against the vivid green. It was a giant ant-eater, or tamandua bandeira, one of the most extraordinary creatures of the latter-day world. It is about the size of a rather small black bear. It has a very long, narrow, toothless snout, with a tongue it can project a couple of feet; it is covered with coarse, black hair, save for a couple of white stripes; it has a long, bushy tail and very powerful claws on its fore feet. It walks on the sides of its fore feet with ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... call sentient beings out of the blessed gulf of nothingness, that they may pay a duty to my weakness by and by, and curse me in their hearts? That would be somewhat too high a price to pay for broth when I am toothless, and the coddling comforts of one who has ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... dwarfs, beggars, brother and sister, with large toothless gaps for mouths and no upper lip, began to dance; and the crowd laughed and applauded. Higher and higher, nearer and nearer to the impossible, rose the quick, piercing notes of the piffero. Heaven seemed almost within reach—the nirvana of music after its quick madness—the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... in all neighbourhood differences, the studious attitude of an incorruptible neutral. Old Grandsire Templey, his father-in-law, sat always in the same low chair on the porch in summer and back of the stove in winter, with his palsied hands crossed on his staff-head and his toothless ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... of refugees streaming back from the battle-fields; pitiful peasant-people with horse-carts and dog-carts and even wheelbarrows, toothless old men and women trudging alongside, children and babies stuck in amidst bedding and furniture and saucepans and bird-cages. This was war, as the common people saw it; but Jimmie could not stop now to think about it—Jimmie was on his way to the front! There ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... ever hear from that legal sphinx—Erle Palma? Mamma only now and then receives epistles fashioned after those once in vogue in Laconia. (I wonder if even the old toothless gossips in Sparta were ever laconic?) I am truly sorry for Erle Palma. That beautifully crystallized quartz heart of his is no doubt being ground between the upper and nether millstones of his love and his pride; and Hymen ought to charge him heavy mill-toll. My dear, have ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... She wore a gray calico slip, tied in around the waist with her apron strings; both were ragged, abominably soiled. Her hair was white; strands of it hung around her neck from a little knot twisted tight on the back of her head. Her face was ghastly white, wrinkled, toothless, but the pale blue eyes, rolling wildly, senselessly, in the cavernous sockets, gave her an expression so terrible that Selah started back involuntarily as she lifted her head, stared at her, and went on with her mending on the ill-smelling ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... go toothless, she wears 'em to this day. And I do believe it is the raspin' of them teeth aginst her gooms, and her discouraged and mad feelin's every time she looks in a glass, that helps to embitter her towards men, and the laws men have made, so's a woman ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)



Words linked to "Toothless" :   ineffective, toothed, edental, edentate, ineffectual, uneffective, edentulate, edentulous



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