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Uncouthness   Listen
Uncouthness

noun
1.
Inelegance by virtue of being an uncouth boor.  Synonym: boorishness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Uncouthness" Quotes from Famous Books



... be sacrificed. Neither would good taste. Indeed, the latter is opposed to excessive ornamentation, whether in dress, manners, speech, or writing. Long live beauty! Long live taste! Long live the "aesthetic side"! But simplicity does not necessarily imply plainness, nor homeliness, nor uncouthness. There can be a simplicity of adornment. I am aware that acting for example's sake is not a sound principle of action; but it is a question if it be not duty in this particular case. A lady physician of large practice once said ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... permission to re-enter Paris. Spite of the mortifying terms in which this celebrated writer had spoken of the king's mistresses, I had a lively curiosity to know him; all that his enemies repeated of his uncouthness, and even of his malicious nature, far from weakening the powerful interest with which he inspired me, rather augmented it, by strengthening the idea I had previously formed of his having been greatly calumniated. The generous vengeance ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... the stage; and Akenside's metaphysical subject and diffuse style were not calculated to engross the general taste. Johnson had taken possession of the field of satire, but there are too many readers of enthusiastic mind to be satisfied with satire. The pedantry and uncouthness of Walter Harte had precluded him from ever being a favourite with the public; Shenstone had not yet risen into fame; and Lyttelton was engrossed by politics. When, therefore, Collins's Odes appeared, all speculation would ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... around the camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... entered; it was a large and heavy picture, and Irving held it straight while Allison stood on a chair and set the hook on the moulding. Allison thanked Irving with the gratitude of one unaccustomed to receiving such consideration; indeed, his uncouthness and unkemptness made him one of those unfortunate boys who suffered now and then from persecution. Irving learned afterwards that the crowd he had met in Westby's room hung together and were the leaders not merely ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... brother-in-law on his way upstairs, and instantly, instinctively, she drew the overwhelming comparison. There was a real soldier, a general! Tonet had something about him that distinguished him from the uncouthness and clumsiness of the others—of the other. His legs were straight, and his stockings had no wrinkles—everything in his make-up was stylish, well fitting, sleek. He belonged to the Juan Tenorios, the royal don Pedros, the Henri Lagarderes, she had seen on the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... only packs his vocabulary with difficult words, old or local, and with unheard of rhythms, chosen to give voice to some never yet articulated emotion, but which drives him into oddities of printing, of punctuation, of the very shape of his accents! A page of Cladel has a certain visible uncouthness, and at first this seems in keeping with his matter; but the uncouthness, when you look into it, turns out to be itself a refinement, and what has seemed a confused whirl, an improvisation, to be the result really of reiterated ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... merely stylized Minoan motives, while 'the shields and other bronzes of the Idaean Cave, the latest of which come down probably to the ninth or even the eighth century, are artistic descendants of Minoan masterpieces modified by some element of uncouthness which was probably of ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... of water belongs to the ocean, so Una Golden humbly belonged to the leaven who, however confusedly, were beginning to demand, "Why, since we have machinery, science, courage, need we go on tolerating war and poverty and caste and uncouthness, and all that ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... and physical, than by their inward and psychical life. On a first interview with them, especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or uncouthness of manner. These are the common people, whether ladies and gentlemen, or simple men and women. There are, however, others, in all ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we chiefly feel, when they have come in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... age. He affects excessive humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his real thoughts under the appearance of mere uncouthness; yet, despite all his self-command, there is something in his air, certain fierce expressions which betray him to the close observer, who discerns in his sardonic smile, and in the marked emphasis with which he leans on his long staff, the hopes that secretly nourish his soul, and the aid upon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... resentment against Trevison for the Hester Harvey incident grew a sudden dull apathy—which presently threatened to become an aversion—for the West. Its crudeness, the uncouthness of its people; the emptiness, the monotony, began to oppress her. Noticing the waning of her enthusiasm, Agatha began to inject energetic condemnations of the country into her conversations with the girl, and to hint broadly of the contrasting allurements ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... very yearning affection for him, and yet his impression had been individual and real, and they felt that something was gone out of their lives, now that he was no longer there. Something strange in their circumstances made itself felt by them; they were more sensible of the grim Doctor's uncouthness, his strange, reprehensible habits, his dark, mysterious life,—in looking at these things, and the spiders, and the graveyard, and their insulation from the world, through the crystal medium of this stranger's character. In remembering him in connection with these things, a ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that was ominous, menacing, a silence of set lips and burning eyes, pregnant with dire possibilities for the city and all within it if aught of evil had befallen their Captain therein. For not only was Marshall, rough almost to uncouthness of manner though he was at times, beloved by all there, but also there was the feeling stirring in every breast that it was vitally important to each one of them that the Spaniard must be taught, once and for all, to regard an Englishman's life as sacred, no matter ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... be sufficiently interested. The elder of the two—a tall, slender, middle-aged woman, with a somewhat severe, though delicate face—sat quietly apart, looking on at the rough dances and games with a keen relish of their primitive uncouthness; but the younger, a slight, alert creature, moved here and there, her large, changeable eyes looking larger ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... face with a look of bewildered astonishment. "An' who the blanky blank are you?" he exclaimed, with all his native uncouthness. "What the blank do you want to take my clo'es off of me for? Who the blue infernal——" All eyes were fixed on his contused countenance and the enormous bump on his temple. "Ah! there's the gent that shook me of five quid. I'll remember you, old party. An' as for you two spielers—you thought ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... to look with curiosity on the strange things that ordinary people pass over without notice, our wonder is continually excited by the variety of phase, and often by the uncouthness of form, under which some of the meaner creatures are presented to us. And this is very specially the case with the inhabitants of the sea. We can scarcely poke or pry for an hour among the rocks, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... on the restaurant balcony; he did nothing formally to press his suit. Indeed, his occasional air of gentle diffidence puzzled and amused her. She had a queer sense, when she beheld him so, that she liked it in him less than some of his old uncouthness, and only a trifle better than such roughness of the heart as that passage with the Chinese waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... and at a supper of the Phi Upsilon Society, to which he had contrived to affiliate himself, he made the best speech that had been heard there since young Jim Rolliver's first flights. The brothers of Undine's friends all pronounced him "great," though he had fits of uncouthness that made the young women slower in admitting him to favour. But at the Mulvey's Grove picnic he suddenly seemed to dominate them all, and Undine, as she drove away with him, tasted the public triumph which was necessary to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Uncouthness" :   uncouth, inelegance



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