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Raciness   Listen
noun
Raciness  n.  The quality of being racy; peculiar and piquant flavor. "The general characteristics of his (Cobbett's) style were perspicuity, unequaled and inimitable;... a purity always simple, and raciness often elegant."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Raciness" Quotes from Famous Books



... company. Mr. Sala says that Lemon's conception of Falstaff (which was also known to the public through the jovial editor's "readings"), though well understood, was "the worst he ever saw;" but Mrs. Cowden Clarke declared it "a fine embodiment of rich, unctuous raciness, no caricature, rolling greasiness and grossness, no exaggerated vulgarisation of Shakespeare's immortal 'fat knight,' but a florid, rotund, self-indulgent voluptuary—thoroughly at his ease, thoroughly ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... eminent degree, not only the requisite knowledge and judgment, but he has a certain temperament and felicity, with a love of and skill in dialectics, which promise even to the articles for a dictionary, from his hand, the utmost raciness and attractive interest. We understand this work will be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been intolerable; but I am so taken up with pruning and gardening,—quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered my jargonels; but my Windsor pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. I recognize the paternity while I watch my tulips. I almost fell ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... at Paris, where he has been about two years and a half, and where I had frequently the pleasure of meeting him during the last winter, and of enjoying the raciness of his conversation, which abounds in wit, anecdote, and an universality of knowledge. It is too well known that he is not unaddicted to the allurements of the gaming table, and it is understood among his immediate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... be but repetition to dilate upon his genius now. In looking over the present volume, we cannot see that the sparkle and fire of his poetry becomes dim, even as read by eyes which have often performed that pleasant task before. The old witchery still abides in them, and the old sweetness, raciness, melody and power. That versatile mind, gliding with such graceful ease over the whole ground of "occasional" pieces, serious and mirthful, impassioned and tender, sacred and satirical, looks out upon us with the same freshness from his present "pictured" page, as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... long he had dreamed of the Hebrew stories, and his head had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel ethics; until they had struck deep root into his heart, and the very expressions had become a part of him; so that he rarely spoke without some antique idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness to the merest trivialities of talk. But the influence of the Bible did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a spirit of peace and love: he interposed between man and wife: he threw himself between the angry, touching his ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fact that he failed to catch her name and understood very little of her rapid French, he was very grateful for Miss Perry's propinquity. The smile and the laugh were both better even than Mrs. Featherstone's specifications, and her English had a refreshing Western tang and raciness that ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... which are biographical rather than critical, any statement of the reasons for which I think them inferior in imagination and fancy to some of the later works; but there was continued and steady growth in them on the side of humor, observation, and character, while freshness and raciness of style continued to be an important help. There are faults of occasional exaggeration in the writing, but none that do not spring from animal spirits and good humor, or a pardonable excess, here and there, on the side of earnestness; and it has the rare virtue, whether gay ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchetty, and odd ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more to think that there is ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... thickets that adorn, the walls of Sallust's garden. Let me here merely point out the pictures of animals, the hunting scenes, and the combats of wild beasts, treated with such astonishing vigor and raciness. There is one, especially, still quite fresh and still in its place, in one of the houses recently discovered. It represents a wild boar rushing headlong upon a bear, in the presence of a lion, who looks on at him with the most superb indifference. It is divined, as the Neapolitans ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... Whitefield Bunyan Smith. The chapel was, if possible, fuller than on the former evening, and the majority of members was, as before, women. A movement throughout the assembly—a whispering, and a ceaseless expectoration, indicated the raciness and interest which attached to the matter in hand, and every eye and mouth seemed opened in the fulness of an anxious expectation. I sat quietly and uncomfortably, and my heart beat palpably against my clothes. I endeavoured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... next story is often known as Drakesbill, which easily becomes Bill Drake. The version that follows is a translation from the French of Charles Marelles as given by Lang in his Red Fairy Book. It has a raciness not in those softened versions in which one friend gets into a pocket, another under a wing, and so on. The persistent energy of the little hero, his resourcefulness in difficulty, his loyal friends, the unexpected honor that comes as recognition of his success, the humor that pervades every ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... news tasty. No, all things considered, you would make nothing of it if you did sue me. Why,"—and he smiled on the old man, who looked as if he were eager to assault him—"lots of the boys would take that kind of paragraph as a compliment. It would tickle their vanity. We admit the raciness—we are proud of it; but we stand for fair play too. Would you mind telling me what you expect ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... to betray the absence of intellectual exertion, and the magnitude of a work is imagined necessarily to shut out all genius. Yet a laborious work has often had an original growth and raciness in it, requiring a genius whose peculiar feeling, like invisible vitality, is spread through the mighty body. Feeble imitations of such laborious works have proved the master's mind that is in the original. There is a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... gray sands dotted with sagebrush and greasewood, the leaping jack rabbits, the frightened bands of half-wild horses, the distant buttes and mesas, and the brilliant blue of the Arizona sky—is the memory of that talk of Mr. Muir's during the long drive, a talk which for range and raciness I have never heard equaled. He often uses the broad dialect of the Scot, translating as he goes along. His forte is in monologue. He is a most engaging talker,—discursive, grave and gay,—mingling thrilling adventures, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus



Words linked to "Raciness" :   spice, sharpness, ribaldry, spiciness, indelicacy



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