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Unmaidenly   Listen
adjective
Unmaidenly  adj.  See maidenly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unmaidenly" Quotes from Famous Books



... you had acted merely in reluctant obedience to the will of Phidias. I am not surprised that Philaemon is offended at your dancing with Alcibiades; assuredly a practice, so boldly at variance with the customs of the country, is somewhat unmaidenly." ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... marriage. It may be that you should go out first. I would not be unmaidenly, Walter; but remember this—the sooner the better, if I can be a comfort to you;—but I can bear any delay rather than be a ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... unjust. This girl, he heard, was beautiful and soft and pleasant, and now they told him that the evil things which had been reported against her had been slanders. He was assured that she was neither coarse, nor vulgar, nor unmaidenly. Two or three old men, of equal rank with his own,—men who had been his father's friends and were allied to the Lovels, and had been taken into confidence by Sir William,—told him that the proper way out of the difficulty had been suggested ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... hope it is not unmaidenly to say that I have received your dear letter with true delight; I do not know why it should be. We have known each other so long, that it is almost natural that I should love you. I do love you dearly, dearest Arthur; and with a heart thankful ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... the keys. She unlocked the secret drawer into which she had seen the Princess place the packet of letters, and taking them out, she drew another sheet of paper along with them, which she read with wide-opening eyes, then with her pretty lips pursed, she actually whistled, which unmaidenly performance merely gave sibilant expression to her astonishment. Taking both the packet of letters and the sheet of paper with her, she ran swiftly up the stair and along the corridor to the room where the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... she knew very well, but the question was, was there time to catch him? The big tree which formed the winning post was very near now. "Scoot, Bobsie, dear!" whispered Norah unconscious of the fact that she was saying anything unmaidenly. At any rate, Bobs understood, for he went forward with a bound. They were nearly level with Jim now—Wally, desperately ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... some distressing thought had aroused him to painful consciousness. Why was this? how came it that he relinquished my hand so abruptly? Was he shocked with my upward glances—did he think my recognition of his thoughts unmaidenly? ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... will you think of me?" Ruth whispered. "You have been so good and kind and I am so foolish. What can you think of a girl who is all this way from home at midnight? It is so—so unmaidenly." ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... indifferent to it. Reuben's anxiety and preoccupation were in themselves a gladness to the girl, for they bore out the delightful prophecy of her own heart. She had always thought Reuben, even when she was a school-girl, the handsomest and manliest and cleverest of men. If it were unmaidenly to have thought so, and to allow her heart to be captured by a man who had never spoken a word of open love to her, she must be called unmaidenly. But there was never a purer heart in the world, and the sophistications of experience, vicarious or otherwise, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... spirit stood en garde. "I have told father everything, auntie," she declared. "I leave it all to him," and bore in silence the comments, without the utterance of which the elder vestal felt she could not conscientiously quit the field. "Bold," "immodest," "unmaidenly," "wanton," were a choice few of Aunt Janet's expletives, and these were unresented. But when she concluded with "I shall send this—thing to him at once, with my personal apologies for the act of an irresponsible child," up sprang Angela with rebellion flashing from her eyes. She had suffered ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... a desolate coast to perish miserably, and it is no moment for concealment. Now, if ever, I must tell you the truth. I know you care for me, and have cared since first we met. An interest no less fateful has led me to seek your acquaintance, and give you my aid. Surely it is not unmaidenly for me to confess this when we face the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... she said, wearily—"to say nothing of my poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must seem. I am called Blanche de Maletroit; I have been without father or mother for—oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... that sound unmaidenly, Ormonde? I don't care whether it does or not, nor whether it is or not. I love him, and he loves me. I am his friend. Could I stay here in luxury if it would make him happier to marry me? Am I a terribly abandoned female? I told Auntie Yvette just what I had done, and though it simply saved ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... an old woman, Mr. Freeman—well—Edgar, if you wish it. I don't think perhaps there is anything unmaidenly in my using your Christian name. We've known each other a great many ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... not resent the rebuke Lady Jim had come to give her while she was undressing. No doubt she deserved it. She had been unmaidenly, and all for love of this light-hearted vagabond who did not care the turn of a hand for her. All day her thoughts had been in chaotic ferment. At times she lashed herself with the whip of her own scorn because she cared for a self-confessed thief, for ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... For the first time she permitted the searchlight of reason to play on the events of the night, and it occurred to her now that she had been guilty of a monstrous breach of convention, an unprecedented, unmaidenly action. She felt like crying now, with the thought that she had held herself so cheap. Bob McGraw saw the flush and the pallor that followed it. He read the unspoken thought behind the changing ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... For, listening with a kindlier heart—even he, hurt by her neglect, had judged her for a while too harshly—he discerned that at her wildest and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens, and uttering much that was thoughtless—Flavia did not suffer one light or unmaidenly word to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... needed none. With what she felt to be a most unmaidenly eagerness, yet could not subdue, she blurted out: "I know I could. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... "Madeleine, with all her faults, would not so entirely forget her own self-respect as to have a clandestine understanding with a young man. I cannot believe she would disgrace herself and us by such unmaidenly conduct." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... of Lady Elizabeth's temper after marriage are not much better founded than those of her maidenly or unmaidenly conduct before it. Dryden's supposed to almost all his contemporaries in belles-lettres. There is no sign in his letters of any conjugal unhappiness, and Malone's "respectable authority" is family ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... she not remembered all the way?—that the last time she visited the spot it was in company with Penn. Now she had come to meet him again—how unmaidenly the act! In darkness, in loneliness, far from the village and its twinkling lights, to meet an attractive and a very good looking young man! What would the world say? Virginia did not care what the world would say. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... The gigolo resisted Mary's unmaidenly advances, and yet, when he was with her, he seemed sometimes to forget to look sombre and blank and remote. They seemed to have a lot to say to each other. Mary talked about America a good deal. About her home town ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... see the unthinking and lavish idolatry you manifest to one, who, but for a silver tongue and florid words, would rather want attractions than be the wonder you esteem him. Fie, Madeline! I blush for you when you speak, it is unmaidenly ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... at the Country Club, and he had been very kind to her, and all of a sudden Kittie told him she knew all, and how sorry she was for him, and that if he would wait till she grew up she would marry him herself. The poor child was so young, you see, that she did not know how unmaidenly this was. And of course at St. Catharine's when they taught us how to enter and leave rooms and how to act in society and at the table, they didn't think to tell us not to ask young men to marry us. I can add with confidence that Kittie James was the only girl who ever did. ...
— Different Girls • Various

... very bitter to herself and unjust in her first misery, but her feeling changed. Her heart rebelled against her own verdict. She had not acted an unmaidenly part in the matter. She had never thought of harm coming to her, or to anyone, out of the pleasant intercourse of these months—the renewal of their old friendship. If she had sinned against Lilias, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... girls, are to swarm through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend the easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country inns to overflowing. How horrified the little Backfisch would have been at such a suggestion, how unmaidenly her excellent aunt would have deemed it, how profoundly they would both have disapproved of any exercise that heightens the colour or disturbs the neatness of a young lady's toilet. I myself have heard German ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... to know that he had carried her prejudice, her dislike by storm, and had won the right to dictate his terms. Because she did not love him she was so frank in her abandon. If he had held her heart's love she would have been shy, were she under tenfold greater obligations. She did not mean to be unmaidenly—she was not so, for her unconscious delicacy saved her—but she was at his feet as truly as the "devotee" is prostrate and helpless before the car of Juggernaut. But Roger was no grim idol, and he was too inexperienced, too modest to understand her. As he held ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... if she felt something unmaidenly in the suggestion and might well remove herself; yet Dorcas knew she would remember. They had separated, and when they were a dozen paces apart, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... for he smiled pleasantly and lifted his hat. Does he consider it an insult to be told he is a gentleman? Perhaps he thought this fact should be too apparent to be mentioned, or else he thought it bold and unmaidenly to open my lips at all. A plague on him for not being able to see the simple truth. No Southerner would have been so stupid, or ready ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... sonnets, amorous sonnets—damnable thought!—gone with her to the Guinigi Tower—then rejected her! A mist seemed to gather about Nobili as he thought of this. He grew stupid in long vistas of speculation. Had Enrica not dared to meet him—Nobili—clandestinely? Was not this very act unmaidenly? (Such are men: they urge the slip, the fall, then judge a woman by the force of their own urging!) Had Enrica met Marescotti in secret also? No—impossible! The scared, white face was before Nobili, now plainer than ever. No—he hated ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... refuse her friendship. What was friendship if it could not stand the strain of falsehood and gossip, and even scandal if necessary. She was not ashamed to let Mark know she would be his friend forever. There was nothing unmaidenly in that. Mark would understand her. Mark had always understood her. And so she cheered her heavy heart through the breakfast hour, and the foolish jesting of the two that sounded to her anxious ears, in the language of scripture, like the "crackling ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... time had elapsed she would think he had not cared, had scorned her letter or thought it unmaidenly! He was filled with dismay and anxiety lest he had hurt her frankness by his seeming indifference. And the knitted things, the wonderful things that she had made with her fair hands! Would she have given them to some one else by this time? Of course, it meant little ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... by something quite foreign to it—by a thought, terrible and perilous, that had formed itself unsummoned in her brain. She had caught herself wondering what marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of the waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her. It was unmaidenly. It was not like her. She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full significance of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the grossnesses ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be somewhat difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. Doubtless it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than difficult to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... we put in the portmanteau first? I see you have unpacked very little, and I am glad that it confirms me in my feeling that your coming over here for the night was just a dutiful sentiment for your lost loved ones, and not any unmaidenly sense of independence in the matter of choice where it is best for you to live. Of course, such a question as that must be left to your guardian, and of course James will put ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... that she could not believe her ears that a child of hers should venture on making such objections—so unmaidenly, so undutiful to a parti selected by the queen and approved by ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... last she went back again to the parlour, and sat without moving and without seeing. She was in an agony lest she had been unmaidenly in determining to go so soon as she heard that Robin was ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... unmaidenly in her regard. She looked upon him as a peasant girl might look upon a passing prince—as something grand, glorious, sunlike, and immeasurably above her sphere; but not as a human being, not as a young man precisely like other ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... tinged with shocked surprise, for she had been educated in the theory that it was unmaidenly to think about the opposite sex. True, experience had proved that this was an impossibility, for thoughts took wing and flew where they would, and dreams grew of themselves—dreams of someone big, and strong, and tender; someone who would understand, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... for whom else wouldst thou call on me to live? Alone, alone, utterly alone, save thee! Wilt thou bid me hence, and leave thee to meet thy fate alone—thee, to whom my mother gave me—thee, without whom my very life is naught? Nigel, oh, despise me not for these wild words, unmaidenly as they sound; oh, let me speak them, or my ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... closed behind Adam and Eve, they had this consolation left, that "the world was all before them where to choose." Was she not a free woman—without even a guardian to trouble her with advice? She had no excuse to act ignobly!—But had she any for being unmaidenly?—Would it then be—would it be a very unmaidenly thing if? The rest of the sentence did not take even the shape of words. But she answered it nevertheless in the words: "Not so unmaidenly as presumptuous." And alas ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... have full possession of you. How I should blame myself if I were to distract you from the aims to which you have devoted your life. I have no one to advise me; but this I know is right. You will, I think, not misunderstand me—you will not think it unmaidenly of me—if I confess to you that I have written these words with some pain, some touch of regret that all is not possible to you that you may desire. But for one soul on devotion. Do I express myself clearly?—you know English is not my native tongue. If ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... swearing; he even knocked over three large pans held by one of his servants, was carrying the mess to the dogs, and he was so beside himself that he would have killed a labourer for a "thank you." He soon perceived his unmaidenly maiden, who was looking towards the road to the monastery, waiting for the page, and unaware that she would never ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... except a slight contretemps arising from the behaviour of my daughter, who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... that she differed from the little misses on her either hand, but quite how, except that he would have said she was jollier, more like a boy, he couldn't have told. That indeed, translated from boy-like into unmaidenly, was the town's chief complaint against her, or primarily against her father. Mr. Eliot's position was not an easy one, and he did nothing to make it easier. For he was half French, his mother having been brought over as a little girl at the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... Marie, I did but joke! You do not think I would accuse you of an unmaidenly partiality; if it grieves you we will not mention Henri's name again, though I remember when you did not spare me so easily; when Charles' name was always in my ear, when you swore that every dress I wore was his choice, that every ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... not sent for you that you should grow presumptuous, because I was unmaidenly enough to dream of so badly behaved a person as yourself. It—it was because it—I thought you should know, so that ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... that unmaidenly sound that issued from under the silken veil at these words? But though Loki turned pale to hear it, Thrym, busy sending for the hammer, did not pay ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... it never been; No one of me could any evil say. Alas, thought I, he doubtless in thy mien, Something unmaidenly or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke



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