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Awry   Listen
adverb
Awry  adv., adj.  
1.
Turned or twisted toward one side; not in a straight or true direction, or position; out of the right course; distorted; obliquely; asquint; with oblique vision; as, to glance awry. "Your crown's awry." "Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry. Into the devious air."
2.
Aside from the line of truth, or right reason; unreasonable or unreasonably; perverse or perversely. "Or by her charms Draws him awry, enslaved." "Nothing more awry from the law of God and nature than that a woman should give laws to men."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Awry" Quotes from Famous Books



... no blood shall run Within thy frozen veins, no kindling thought Light up those eyeless sockets wherein naught But hate could dwell if once they flashed the fire Of being, or the doom-gift of Desire Should curse thy life, unbidden and unsought. Poor snow man with thy tattered hat awry, And broomstick musket toppling from thy hands, 'Tis well thou hast no language to decry Thy poor creator or his vain commands; No tear to shed that thou so soon must die, No voice to lift in prayer ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... the eye; Flattery leads the ear awry; Wealth doth but enchant the wit; Want, the overthrow of it; While in Wisdom's worthy grace, Virtue ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... figure of the young Cuban, who was no longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scapular twisted awry across his face, and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... parlor door was partly of glass, shaded by a silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that, after quitting the room, he could by no means refrain from peeping through ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is put on awry and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a white line, which contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... went all awry. She had expected to give her son a treat by taking him quietly to Farmer Green's carrot patch, so that he might have his first taste of carrots. So it wasn't strange that it upset her a bit when she found that there ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... And the lonely giant, Jean Leblaude, slept the light slumber of the journeyer in the wild; the slumber that sees and hears when danger is abroad, and yet rests the body. He dreamed not, though all his schemes had gone awry, for he was weary. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... cried, and her red delicate mouth went awry with dismay and disappointment, and her expression was the half incredulous expression of a child suddenly and cruelly disappointed: "You won't ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... but bad tidings had, as Rose guessed the instant her eyes fell upon Aunt Plenty, hobbling downstairs with her cap awry, her face pale, and a letter flapping wildly in her hand as she cried distractedly: "Oh, my boy! My boy! Sick, and I not there to nurse him! Malignant fever, so far away. What can those children do? Why did I ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... [i.e. consciousness] doth make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... arrows of Love, arrows which went through his eyes, Arrows which were her nailed-scratched bosom, her reddened sleep-denied eyes, her crimson lips from a bath of kisses, her hair disarranged with the flowers awry, and her girdle all loose and slipping. With hair knot loosened and stray locks waving, her cheeks perspiring, her glitter of lips impaired, And the necklace of pearls not appearing fair because of her jar-shaped breast being denuded, And her belt, her glittering girdle, dimmed ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... neighbourhood will come and tell bawdy stories to enliven the occasion. You get married, and thereafter you are at the mercy of your wife, who will indulge your wishes or not as suits her mood. Your house will be all awry if she has but a slight headache. When the baby comes, the place will be filled with old women and baby-linen and medical apparatus, and you will have all the anxieties of a father added to the discomforts of a neglected husband. For the rest, your wife will know how "to cuckold, jilt, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... sunrise issuing, paced a moor Stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts, Till noontide. Sudden then he stopt, and thus Discoursed within: "A plot from first to last, The fraudulent bondage, flight, and late return; For now I mind me of a foolish dream Chance-sent, yet drawn by him awry. One night Methought that boy from far hills drenched in rain Dashed through my halls, all fire. From hands and head, From hair and mouth, forth rushed a flaming fire White, like white light, and still that ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... the street, or the roof itself is entire, but has dropped sideways over the ruin below as a drunken cap over the dissolute. The lower floors are heaps of damp mortar and bricks. Very rarely a solitary picture hangs awry on the wall of a house where there is no other sign that it was ever inhabited. I saw in such a room the portrait of a child who in some moment long ago laughed while it clasped a dog in a garden. You continue to gaze at a sign like that, you don't know why, as though something you cannot name ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... majority turned away not quite satisfied—with an inward foreboding that all was not as well as it might be—that critical eyes would see ground for criticism. Especially was this true of those whom Time's interfering fingers had pulled somewhat awry, even beyond the remedy of art, and of those whose bank account, jewels, silks, etc., were not quite up to the standard of some others who might jostle them in the crush. Realize, my reader, the anguish of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... twisted, bent, devious, deformed, tortuous, sinuous, winding, flexuous, curved, curvilinear, spiral, labyrinthial; distorted, awry, askew, wry; dishonest, fraudulent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... been fulfilled; if, in place of the elegant, rakish-looking chevalier in florid garb, he had been confronted by an individual awry in body or hideous in feature, he would not have been confused, or stood repeating to himself, "My God, can this be a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... now most disreputable: Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms, the former loaded down with hand-bags and the latter with India-rubbers; Aunt Melissa came next under a burden of bloated umbrellas; the nurse last, with her hat awry, and the baby a caricature of its morning trimness, in her embrace. A day's pleasure is so demoralizing, that no party can stand it, and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... Sidney's visit, and had hastened upstairs to exchange her coarse homespun for a gown of grey taffeta and a kirtle of the same colour; a large white cap or hood was set a little awry on her thin, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... endows the President with an illimitable power to remove all officers in whose appointment he has participated with the exception of judges of the United States. The motivation of the holding was not, it may be assumed, any ambition on the Chief Justice's part to set history aright—or awry.[312] Rather it was the concern which he voiced in the following passage in his opinion: "There is nothing in the Constitution which permits a distinction between the removal of the head of a department or a bureau, when he discharges a political ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... and she looked as if she had blown all the way from there to Spring Beach. She was, or had been, prettily dressed, but, as Mona had predicted, her hat was awry, her collar ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... presence lingered. After his camp chores were completed he went over to pull down the lean-to which the girls had utilized as a tent. The spruce boughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry; the sides were leaning in. As there was now no further use for this little habitation, he might better pull it down. Dale did not acknowledge that his gaze had involuntarily wandered toward it many times. Therefore he strode over with ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... the bolts and opened. "I ain't feeling like taking any more chances with the Corson family this evening," he admitted, with a grin that set his long jaw awry. "Your father nigh cuffed my head up to a peak when I tried to tell ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... every visible evidence of material prosperity. It is true that when one has driven up the private road, be the same a mere "boreen" or a "shplendid avenue," the bell is found to be broken, the knocker wrenched off, the blinds hauled up awry, and the servants hard to be got at; but the householder is prosperous nevertheless. His larder is well supplied with poultry and wild fowl, his cellar contains "lashings," not only of "Parliament and pot," or "John Jamieson" and ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... as it obviously was in Rathole were able to build these semi-underground domes to resist the earth shocks that came from Den Hoorn. But this one showed no signs of stress. A religious print and a small pencil sketch of Senora Murillo, probably done by the boy, were awry on the inward-curving walls, but ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay

... up the skirts of his coat, and replaced his awry cushion, and began to think that perhaps, after all, he had been asleep. But Mrs. Geer was too much interested in the subject of her own cogitations to pursue her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... think they're true to life, And I'll just tell you why; They never have a rumpled frock Or ribbon bow awry. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... with a comical sigh; "the world's awry this morning and I must vent my crossness on somebody, so let it be Peggy. But if I can carry her your note it will atone for my peevish speech a dozen times, for is not Captain Sir John Faulkner coming, and you know as well as all of us that Peggy's ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... ill-favored images of her gods, when their habitations are most splendidly and most beautifully built. She robeth herself in fine linen, decketh herself with jewels, anointeth her hair and maketh her eyes lovely with kohl, and lo! when she would picture herself she setteth her shoulders awry and slighteth the grace of her joints and the softness of her flesh. O, that thy brave spirit had arisen long ago, ere the perversion had become a heritage, dear to the Egyptian sculptor as his bones! But now, artist though he be, his eye is so befilmed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... heaven-born (lani), it was but a trifle—a new company, young graduates of the halau, have set themselves up as great ones; mere rustics; they have no proper acquaintance with the traditions of the art as taught by the bards of... your majesty's father. They mouth and twist the old songs all awry, thou son ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... its romance spoiled, and it itself reduced to the level of a machine that calculates. If it acts on impulse and, meeting a heart that beats, so it thinks, in unison, unites itself with it, often enough that other soon palpitates to a different rhythm, or itself cannot keep time, and all things go awry. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... awry doth go. Fair lands and wide full well I know; Past house, and field, and fold of man, The swift steed of the rollers ran: My lands, and kin, I left behind, That I this latter day might find, Coldback for sunny meads to have; Hard fate a ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... tender epistles of sympathy and regret. You might at that time, if you were a member of the Club, have heard Mr. Hall in his jaunty and somewhat defiant manner; you might have seen Mr. Tweed, riding in the midnight hour, with countenance vacant and locks awry, and have heard dropping from his lips, 'The public demands a victim.' And so he proposed to charge upon Connolly, who had legal custody of the vouchers, the stealing and burning of them. He proposed to put some one else in the office of the Comptroller when Connolly should be crushed out of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands. Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a fuss—and, really, such an active, busy young lady couldn't look always as if she came trim out of a band-box. Mr. March wanted so much waiting on, he seemed to fancy he still had his big house in Wales, and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... said to her husband, "My pretty Hairy-Hide, tell me what news; what do they say abroad in the world?" And he answered, "Trust me, there is no hand's breadth clean; everything's going topsy-turvy and awry." "But what is it?" replied his wife. "Why I could tell pretty stories of all the confusion that is going on," replied the ogre, "for one hears things that are enough to drive one mad, such as buffoons rewarded with gifts, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... should please us all, That's not too thin, and not too tall, Nor much awry, nor over small, And, if but ROMAN, asks no better— May die in darkness:—I, for one, Disdain to tell the barb'rous Hun That Persians but adore the sun Till ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... he astonished all by, With their "Law, dear me!" "Did ever you see?" He'd a pipe in his mouth and a glass in his eye, A hat all awry - An octagon tie - And a miniature—miniature glass ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... who was not overyoung, but had the foulest and worst-favoured visnomy was ever seen; for she had a nose flattened sore, a mouth all awry, thick lips and great ill-set teeth; moreover, she inclined to squint, nor was ever without sore eyes, and had a green and yellow complexion, which gave her the air of having passed the summer not at Fiesole, but at ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... Three marble steps, awry and moldy, descended to the lawn from a French window in the side of the desolate mansion. They were screened by a tangle of rose-mallow, and there John ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the shrubbery, and stood there thinking for a time. She was a queer-looking little figure as she stood thus in her short holland overall, her stout bare legs, brown as berries, slightly apart, her head thrown back, her hair awry, a smudge on her cheek, her ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento. No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under the ban, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... times—"It seems to me," said a philosophic peasant recently at Valjevo, in the heart of Serbia, "it seems to me that if we had a plebiscite then Valjevo might not wish to remain with Serbia!"—even in a world that is so awry the Croats are more reserved towards the union than is good for the State. Perhaps they would cherish fewer grievances if they had gained their freedom with greater difficulty; and surely they need have no more uneasiness than have the Scots that their name ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... the rest being perfectly correct. [OEuvres (Siecle de Louis XV., c. 6), xxviii. 74.] No other details are to be got anywhere, if they were of importance; the very dates of it in the best Prussian Books are all slightly awry. Here, by accident, are two poor flint-sparks caught from the dust whirlwind, which yield a certain sufficing twilight, when put in their place; and show us both sides of the matter, the smooth side and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a brighter, quicker-looking person, with very clear eyes, like two stars, who went continually through the room, putting everything to rights. If a chair was out of its place, or a table turned awry, or a tool put down where it should not be, she could not bear to see it for a minute, but put all things straight again, so that nobody was at a loss where to find anything, She ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... him beside march'd amorous Desire. Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain, Yet was that other swain this elder's sire, And gave him being, common to them twain: His garment was disguised very vain, And his embroidered bonnet sat awry; 'Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain, Which still he blew, and kindled busily. That soon they life conceiv'd and forth in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... accomplish his desire, and so they went on their enemies. The Lord Charles of Bohemia his son, who wrote himself King of Almaine and bare the arms, he came in good order to the battle; but when he saw that the matter went awry on their party, he departed, I can not tell you which way. The King his father was so far forward that he strake a stroke with his sword, yea, and more than four, and fought valiantly, and so did his company; and they adventured themselves so forward that they were there all slain, and the next ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... Secretary of War Stanton are ruffled and awry, and his features are not calm and undisturbed, indicating that he has an idea of what's the matter in that back-yard; the countenance of the officer in the rear of the Secretary of War wears rather an anxious, or worried, look, and his hair isn't ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... woman, who had attempted to make a show with a new silk dress and a hat in the latest fashion, but who had lamentably failed, owing to the slouchiness of her figure and some misadventure by which her hat had been set awry on her head and her usual complacency destroyed. Later, I noted that her down-looking eyes had a false twinkle in them, and that, commonplace as she looked, she was one to steer clear of in times ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... enthusiastically; while the children beat the dust out of the carpet hopping up and down, as they cried: "Do it again!" "We want it all over!" when the curtain went down at last on the flushed and panting party, Mother G—— bowing, with her hat all awry, and the goose doing a double shuffle as if it did not know how to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... was delighted. Her little eyes twinkled with excitement, her yellow cap was pushed awry, and her hands trembled with pleasure. It was obvious that a visitor was an unusual event. Miss Bethel had said very little, but she had given Harry that same smile that he had seen before. She busied herself now with the salad, and he ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... penetrated to me, so came a knowledge of the sin and sorrow abroad in the world—the cry of the millions oppressed, downtrodden, God-forsaken! The wheels of social mechanism needed readjusting—things were awry. Oh, that I might find a cure and give it to my fellows! I dizzied my brain with the problem; I was too much for myself. A man with these notions is a curse to himself, but a woman—pity help a woman of that description! She is not merely a creature out ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... high hill above the town, commanding a beautiful view of the country far and wide, stand the ruins of the castle of Harry Awry O'Neil (contentious or cross Harry), an arch between two ruined towers being the only distinct feature left of what was once a great castle. This castle commanded a view of two other castles, owned and inhabited by two sons or two brothers of this Harry Awry ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... here I raise this cry: — Read me who can, I read myself — nor so I from the beaten pathway tread awry, Nor thus the matter of my song forego. Not more to what is shown do I apply My saying, than to what I have to show. But now return we to the paladine, Who was about to taste ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... busy-loving courtier; a heartless threatening Thraso; a self-wise-seeming schoolmaster; an awry-transformed traveller? These if we saw walk in stage names, which we play naturally, therein were delightful laughter, and teaching delightfulness: as in the other, the tragedies of Buchanan do justly bring forth a divine admiration. But I have lavished out too many words ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... leaving the room without your mask and my women are outside. Come here," and she tied the thing upon his head, setting it all awry, then pushed him from ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... grandma, dropping the broom to settle her cap, which Polly in her extreme endeavors to carry on the conversation, had knocked slightly awry; "well, that'll ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... at the Descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are doing down ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to them. The public found that the devils had never gone through their lower classes. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... sobs or wailed softly. According to the custom that had unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... alongside, the stocky, stout lad of a farmer in his brown duck coat lined with sheep's wool, came up from between the wheels. His cap was awry, his trousers were muddy at the knees where he had knelt in the moist road, and his face was red ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

... the experts became partisans, every one was dragged in except Dick and the Herr Professor, and the latter, flushed and rattled and his glasses all awry, was at length appealed to ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... favorable, the farmer, assisted by his relatives and friends, begins the clearing without delay. It is essential that at least a little work be done in order to clinch the bargain with the powers above, for should a delay occur the omens might go awry and necessitate a repetition of the ceremonies and even an abandonment of the farm. I heard of several cases where prospective farms were abandoned under ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... with his face inflamed with fury, his periwig awry, his dress disordered by the haste with which he had come up, Allan Fitz-Henry broke upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... would present were they away. The origin of these long detrital promontories, which form, when viewed from the heights on either side, so peculiar a feature in the landscape, and which, were they directly opposite, instead of being set down a mile awry, would shut up the opening altogether, has not yet been satisfactorily accounted for. One special theory assigns their formation to the agency of the descending tide, striking in zig-gig style, in consequence of some peculiarity of the coast-line ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... lost consciousness some moments before Lanyard's intervention. Released, she had fallen positively inert, and lay semi-prostrate on a shoulder, with limbs grotesquely slack and awry, as if in unpleasant mimicry of a broken doll. Only the whites of bloodshot eyes showed in her livid and distorted countenance. Arms and legs twitched spasmodically, the ample torso was violently shaken by ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... farther. I know you only too well, Mr. Leyden. The day has long gone by when I could be fooled by you. My advice is that you go back to your ship and to Java. There is nothing here for you. Your schemes have all gone awry." ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... opened, gathered to itself the pale glow of awakening interest. Ford rose painfully, inch by inch, until he was sitting upon the side of the bed, got from there to his feet, looked down and saw that he was clothed to his boots, and crossed slowly to where a cheap, flyspecked looking-glass hung awry upon the wall. His self-inspection was grave and minute. His eyes held the philosophic ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... yet passed off. When the father of the unhappy young man who had fallen into the snares of the enchantress came on to the stage in a yellow frock-coat and a dishevelled white wig, opened his mouth awry, and losing his presence of mind before he had begun, only brought out a faint bass tremolo, they almost burst into laughter. ... But ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... needful." The cardinal-minister combined fertility in ideas with such a genius for organization that his plans were quickly under way. Unhappily his talent for details, for the efficient handling of little things, was not nearly so great, and some of his arrangements went sadly awry in consequence. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... of thought or feeling in the social circle around her, Lady Chillingly preserved the unmoved calm of her dignified position. A very good woman certainly, and very ladylike. No one could detect a flaw in her character, or a fold awry in her flounce. She was only, like the gods of Epicurus, too good to trouble her serene existence with the cares of us simple mortals. Not that she was without a placid satisfaction in the tribute which the world laid ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is heavier than he. The young girl flings over her shoulder a load of hay which is also heavier than herself, advances a few steps, halts, and drops it, without the strength to carry it. The old woman of fifty rakes away without stopping, and with her kerchief awry she drags the hay, breathing heavily and tottering. The old woman of eighty only rakes the hay, but even this is beyond her strength; she slowly drags along her feet, shod with bast shoes, and, frowning, she ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... the palsy, and dragged one side along with extreme difficulty. His bloated cheeks and body had fallen into deep pits; and the swelling massy parts were of a black-red hue, so that the skin appeared a bag of morbid contents. His mouth was drawn awry, his speech entirely inarticulate, his eye obscured by thick rheum, and his clothes were stained by the saliva that occasionally driveled from his lips. His legs were wasted, his breast was sunk, and his protuberant paunch looked like ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... boy. What did he know of psychic breaking stress, who had never been tried to his own limit? "We'll have to keep the secret, you and I, or—" No, what was the use? Within Mardikian's small experience, it was so much more natural to believe that one man, Coffin, had gone awry, than to understand a month-by-month rotting of the human soul under ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c. v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric[obs3], awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump[obs3], deformed; harelipped; misshapen, misbegotten; misproportioned[obs3], ill proportioned; ill-made; grotesque, monstrous, crooked as a ram's horn; camel backed, hump backed, hunch backed, bunch backed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... would not choose me, Tommy," Sandy replied, his face awry with a triumphant smile, "when she might ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... sober fact things were going very much awry. And every day they got worse. Even his original bevy of troops, those he had brought up with him into the country on the stern-wheel launch, seemed to grasp the fact that his star was in the descendant. There was no open mutiny, for they still feared him too much ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swollen and thick; His legs are thin and dry; * * * * * "Few months of life he has in store, As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more Do his ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... and the girls lost themselves in the crowd, to appear in person for their next dance, the boys none the wiser. Only John, with his donkey's head very much awry, noticed a change as he watched Howard Garth painstakingly teaching Sally the rest of the steps to the fox trot. Janet had not thought of telling Sally that she was being very nice to John; she hardly realized it herself; so Sally ignored him as girls always ignored John, and he noticed it. ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... sounds all wrong to-night. Everything is all wrong. The whole world gone awry. It's like being on another planet to be out here in this wilderness at such a time. I don't believe I've ever felt exiled before, but, begad! I do to-night. Let's turn in. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... began to ride. My soul Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind. Past hopes already lay behind. What need to strive with a life awry? Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... furniture: it will all lie in a hopelessly unglued state, separated into its elements. There will not be any china tea-sets,—all broken in the last dish-washing. There may be a few books in loose bindings and faded covers, and a few works of art in frames that furnace-heat has set sadly awry. There will be a plenty ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... reach. Among the green fields lay a village, and on this village the eyes of the King and his armies were turned as they came down the slope. It lay beneath them, grave with seared antiquity, with old-world gables stained and bent by the lapse of frequent years, with all its chimneys awry. Its roofs were tiled with antique stones covered over deep with moss, each little window looked with a myriad strange cut panes on the gardens shaped with quaint devices and overrun with weeds. On rusted hinges the doors sung ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... for the sea no longer," mumbled One-arm Jerry through one corner of the mouth that paralysis had drawn awry. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What! did the Hand then ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... other. Preston's pocket gaped, and was, I noticed, a little bit ripped; and when my eye got down to the shoes, his had not the black gloss of his companion's. With that one there was not, I think, a thread awry. And then, there was a certain relaxation in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... demurely in search of Clorinda, found her sitting before the glass in utter humiliation, and protested that the whole thing was nonsense. That she hadn't seen a gray hair, and if the turban was awry, it must have happened when Clorinda ran up stairs in such hot haste. Victoria was sorry: oh, very, very sorry. Would Miss Clo only overlook it this once, and begin ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... deep-set, were surmounted by heavy brows once black, now of an iron grey. His mouth was of prodigious width, the lips thin and straight and his nose long, narrow and pointed. He wore a dirty wig which was always awry, a faded mulberry coloured coat, and a frayed velvet waistcoat reaching halfway down his thighs. His stockings were dirty and hung in bags about his ankles, his feet were cased in yellow slippers more ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... not so much as look awry now. Police and gendarmes were everywhere. Spies seemed to catch men's thoughts. More troops were coming in. Surely something was ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... not swiftly,—but, as fly The sea-gulls, with a steady, sober flight— And then swung back; nor close—but stood awry, Half letting in long shadows on the light, Which still in Juan's candlesticks burned high, For he had two, both tolerably bright, And in the doorway, darkening darkness, stood The sable ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... their needlework clasped in their hands. Madame Wang was asleep on the cool couch in the inner rooms. Chin Ch'uan-erh was sitting next to her massaging her legs. But she too was quite drowsy, and her eyes wore all awry. Pao-y drew up to her with gentle tread. The moment, however, that he unfastened the pendants from the earrings she wore, Chin Ch'uan opened her eyes, and realised that it was no one ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... fortunate for Peter, who was not accustomed to gazing at the sky with his feet in the air. But he fell smack into the kettle, head foremost. It had been decreed, however, that all should come out right with him, that day; the fire had died out, the water was cold, and the kettle awry, so that he got off with nothing worse than a scratched forehead, a peeled nose, and two well scraped cheeks, and, thank Heaven! nothing ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... camels have brought the tidings of approach. From the shelters of the shops, so silent except just now, cheerful cries break out; the streets are filled with Arabs who sing joyfully; tikka gharries rattle madly by, whips waving and turbans awry; there are flashes of color from rich men's gowns and the sounds of their clicking oryx-hide sandals as they rapidly strike the stony pavements; there is a continual blunt clatter from the tom-toms in the hands of long-gowned ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... shut their gates, and though Mechlin, Termonde and a few other places surrendered, the prince saw only too plainly that his advance into Flanders would not bring about the relief of Mons. All his plans had gone awry. Alva could not be induced to withdraw any portion of the army that was closely blockading Mons, but contented himself in following Orange with a force under his own command while avoiding a general ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... men, my lords, And ye will have me love him, ye will swear That I do love him; who shall say ye lie? Look on your paper; maybe I have wept: Doubtless I love your hanged man in my heart. What, is the writing smutched or gone awry? Or blurred-ay, surely so much-with one tear, One little sharp tear strayed on it by chance? Come, come, the man is deadly dangerous; ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... abruptly and went out of the room, and a moment later Leslie heard the front door slam. Elizabeth, standing at the head of the stairs, heard it also, and turned away, with a new droop to her usually valiant shoulders. Her world, too, had gone awry, that safe world of protection and cheer and kindliness. First had come Nina, white-lipped and shaken, and Elizabeth had had to face the fact that there were such things as treachery and the queer hidden things that men did, and that came to light ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... off, a lively Parisian journalist tumbled into our compartment with his despatch-box and his portmanteau. He was in the full evening dress in which he had been parading about all day with the Presidential party; his white cravat was loose and awry, and the grey dust of the Calais streets and piers lay thick upon his glossy bottines; but he was in the best of spirits, for he had caught the train and would now reach Paris ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... hideth it, so leapt up Euryalos at that blow. But great-hearted Epeios took him in his hands and set him upright, and his dear comrades stood around him, and led him through the ring with trailing feet, spitting out clotted blood, drooping his head awry, and they set him down in his swoon among them and themselves went forth and fetched ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... all his attention. The shawl—a gay one with colors in it—had fallen from her head and was trailing, wet and bedraggled, over an equally bedraggled skirt. Soused with wet, her hair disheveled, and all her garments awry with the passion of her movements, she yet made his heart stand still, as, with a sullen look at those about her, she rushed into the room prepared for her use and slammed the door behind her with a quick cry of mingled rage and relief. For with all these drawbacks of manner and ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... fingers—light as spirit touches—now swept the keys; a Debussey fantasy, almost as pianissimo as one could play it, vibrated around them. Outside the whir! whir! of the skates went on. A little girl tumbled. Mr. Heatherbloom regarded her; ribbons awry; fat legs in the air. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... Christmas 1655; and then we went down to Jenkins, to Sir Thomas Fanshawe's; but upon New Year's Day my husband fell very sick, and the scorbutic again prevailed, so much that it drew his upper lip awry, upon which we that day came to London, into Chancery Lane, but not to my cousin Young's, but to a house we took of Sir George Carey, for a year. There by the advice of Doctor Bathurst and Doctor Ridgley, my husband took physic ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression—being put up by a squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same side—the new nose stands a little awry, in the ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... all ridiculous, my dear." What did any imperfection of raiment matter with a face and head like Deleah's; as exquisitely moulded, as delicately poised on her slender throat as a flower on its stalk? "There's a tiny bit of hair awry," the mother said, caught the girl's little chin in her hand and passed her fingers over the shadowy black hair for the mere pleasure ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... a timid knock on the door, and Laura opened it to admit Jessie. The appearance of the girl showed that she was much upset. Her face was tear-stained and her hair awry. ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... outset the German plan went awry. Although the contemplated line of advance was through Liege and Namur, it was not sufficient, with Belgium openly in arms to defend her country, to reduce only these two towns. The Belgian Army could, and later did, fall back to the north ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... Sidrophel of accompts looked of the like hard and impenetrable material, as though it were grown into his similitude, forming but a lower adjunct to his person. It was evident they had not parted company for the last twenty years. Nature had formed him awry. A boss or hump, of considerable elevation, extended like a huge promontory on one shoulder; from the other depended an arm longer by some inches than its fellow. As it described a greater arc its activity ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... was awry," she continues, "my Hair in sad confusion, and my Face a Milkmaid Red, so that I said with but little Grace, 'Sir, I fear you have found me a grievous Weight.' Whereupon he answered me that so light was my weight, that his Heart was the Heavier for the Putting of me ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... Tom in the only spot he cared to occupy on earth. She found Miss Jemima in a state of wild commotion, with her riding-dress buttoned awry, and one of her gauntlets torn ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... as winter comes, shall I Twist the goslings' necks awry. If in like case are the geese, I have finished each ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... care, These fatal anthems, lamentable songs, Come to their view, who like afflicted are; Let them yet sigh their own, and moan my wrongs. But untouched hearts with unaffected eye, Approach not to behold my soul's distress; Clear-sighted you soon note what is awry, Whilst blinded souls mine errors never guess. You blinded souls, whom youth and error lead; You outcast eaglets dazzled with your sun, Do you, and none but you, my sorrows read; You best can judge the wrongs that she hath ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable

... bring back with them pack-horses laden with bales of goods. Sometimes, besides these, they would return with a poor soul, his hands tied behind his back and his feet beneath the horse's body, his fur cloak and his flat cap wofully awry. A while he would disappear in some gloomy cell of the dungeon-keep, until an envoy would come from the town with a fat purse, when his ransom would be paid, the dungeon would disgorge him, and he would be allowed to go upon ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... of a human being? Was it permitted to do such a thing to a man? His nose looked like a patchwork of small dice of different colors. His mouth was awry, and the whole left cheek was like a piece of bloated raw meat, red and criss-crossed with deep scars. Ugh! How ugly! A fright! And besides, instead of a cheekbone, he had a long hollow, deep enough to hold a man's finger. And it was for this he had let himself be tortured so? For this he had ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... the latch there entered a person with his hat awry upon his head, his clothes perversely ill-suited to his form, his eyes staring in directions opposite to their intelligence, and a certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole figure. Wherever he might chance to be, whether ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the various aunts and uncles and cousins and friends who would "drive over" from the country round about. It would have been something Madam Schuyler would never have been able to get over if aught had been awry when a single uncle or aunt appeared upon the scene, or if there seemed to be the least evidence of ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... you?" he laughed. He looked like a drunken troubadour en deshabille, with those up-brushed mustaches and his usually neat brown beard all spread awry. "Temptation's more ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... asking, not for a privilege, but for a necessity. You may not see the necessity, you may easily argue that women do not need to vote. Indeed, the women themselves in considerable numbers may agree with you. Nevertheless, women do need the ballot. They need it to right the balance of a world sadly awry because of its brutal neglect of the rights of women and children. With the best will and knowledge, no man can know women's wants as well as women themselves. To disfranchise women is deliberately to turn from knowledge and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... walls below, and they often present a most curious jumble: a few good engravings; gaudy pictures, first issued as advertisements; portraits of persons, known and unknown; worthless prints in gorgeous frames; and a picture with some merit, stuck all awry in a frame which does not belong ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... of men were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable, his menore awry upon his tangled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... that they are just human beings like ourselves, but how do they get things so awry? They put such a slight upon parenthood, with their ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... at the rear of the procession and looked back the figure of the young Cuban, who was no longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scapula twisted awry across his face and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil he had ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... have seen you serve, Disciple of those early springs, With ears awry and tail a-curve You lost yourself in ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson

... valet. His shock head of hair was unacquainted with comb or brush; his grey coat reached to his calves; his breeches were open at the knees; his green waistcoat, too short to reach the latter garment, was buttoned awry; huge brogues encased his feet, and a red handkerchief, big enough to serve as the royal of a frigate, was tied loosely round his neck. He stood waiting for further orders, when the major, turning round to take a sip of coffee, by a sign bade ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... hear it! That's just my intention," replied the young lady, tugging the disreputable skirt still further awry, and nodding her beautiful head, with an air of mysterious amusement. The blue serge had a smudge of white all down one side, which looked suspiciously as if the powder-box had been spilt over it. A seam gaped open ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... a girl who would depart lightly from conventions that she recognized as authoritative. He remembered her as she used to march up to the platform for Children's Day exercises with the other little girls of the infant class; in her stiff white dress, never a curl awry or a wrinkle in her stocking, keeping her little comrades in order by the acquiescent gravity of her face, which seemed to say, "How pleasant it is to do ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... man can afford? Why do they use and covet such novelty of inventions; such new-fangled tires, and spend such inestimable sums on them? "To what end are those crisped, false hairs, painted faces," as [5001]the satirist observes, "such a composed gait, not a step awry?" Why are they like so many Sybarites, or Nero's Poppaea, Ahasuerus' concubines, so costly, so long a dressing, as Caesar was marshalling his army, or a hawk in pruning? [5002]Dum moliuntur, dum comuntur annus est: a [5003]gardener takes not so much delight and pains ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... where the convenient litmus paper is available. Virgil (Georgic II, 241) gives the formula: "Fill a basket with soil, and strain fresh water through it. The taste of water strained through sour soil will twist awry ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... a palace a robe worn awry win much distinction and success, such crowds of followers and adherents did it draw. You may ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... Beatrice's brief sojourn in the business world still remained—an elaborate easy-chair with rose pillows, a thermos bottle and cut-glass tumbler, a curlicue French mirror slightly awry and, on her desk, a gay-bordered silk handkerchief, a silver-mesh bag, and a great amount of cluttered notations; all of which proved that the understudy secretary had not yet ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... upon seated astride of an empty cask, with his musket across his knees. His cap was gone, and his hair was awry; he was scarcely recognizable for a mask of perspiration ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... in the long chair, throwing her arms above her head, and crossing her feet, which were dressed with "gun metal" stockings and shoes. Her hat was pushed awry, and wisps of hair fell at either side of ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... when it was a question of gratifying him she had grown used to spare no pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom, among old preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle awry. I know not whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all events it did not prevent him from saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch, that I must excuse him, as he had to go back to the club. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... along its edge. The table was pushed almost against the wall, and in its center stood Shenton, laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. His curly hair was damp and clung to his white forehead. His blouse was soiled, his kilt awry. One short stocking had fallen down over his shoe. Manoel was also ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... dashed up to the cook-wagon, saw two men crawl out and stand for a minute looking. Then, as their hands moved to their hip-pockets like one, he opened fire. At almost the same instant the flames leaped from their guns, and Bud's hat was knocked awry by a bullet that went clean ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... Cinderella would have drest their hair awry to punish them for their impertinence, but she was so good natured that she dressed them most becomingly. The two sisters were so delighted, that they scarcely ate a morsel for a couple of days. They spent their whole time before a looking-glass, and they would ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... heated discussion, for his father was walking up and down the room, his face flushed, his black eyes blazing with suppressed anger, his plum-colored coat unbuttoned as if to give him more breathing space, his silk scarf slightly awry. St. George Temple must have been the cause of his wrath, for the latter's voice was reverberating through the room ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... summer's afternoon Kitty was the last to make her appearance. She came skimming gracefully through the orchard under the cherry trees, with her hair down her back, her skirt awry, and a great stain on the front of her pinafore. In the seventies girls as old as Kitty wore long white pinafores. The stain was caused by some cherry juice, for Kitty had stopped many times as she approached the others to take great handfuls of the ripe fruit, and thrust them ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... than they did outside—far more. A person who came into Burton and Norcross sensed whether his tie was awry or his shoes unshined, and so did everybody else. For if you entered the shop at all, you entered it deliberately. No one ever strolled or sauntered into Burton and Norcross. It wasn't that sort of place. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... they were so rapidly drifting. The doctor still regarded Mr. Everett as his chief friend in the family, and thankfully accepted his hospitality, which broke in so pleasantly upon his solitary life at the boarding-house, where the long table was presided over by his landlady, with her cap awry and her sleeves rolled to her elbows, while she gossiped volubly with her boarders, in the intervals of her skirmishes with the frowsy waiting maid. And Louise? She only knew that she enjoyed the society ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... Belgium also, to buy silks and laces. And the stout old gentleman? See how happy he looks to be back again where English is spoken, and he can pay his way in half-crowns and shillings. You see the milliner's head-woman, dressed with obtrusive smartness, though everything seems a little awry. She has been over to Paris for the fashions; in a few days her firm will send out a little circular, and Hampstead or Balham will be much impressed. And—what do you make of those two, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lane of bayonets went out of plumb, out of shape and order, and a thousand brass-buttoned throats shouted good-by and hurrah. Shakos waved, shoulders were snatched and hugged, blue kepis and red were knocked awry, beards were kissed and mad tears let flow. And still, with a rigor the superbest yet because the new tune was so perfect to march by, fell the unshaken tread of the cannoneers, and every onlooker laughed and wept and cheered as the brass rent ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... as she turned round for his benefit. Her hair was a little awry and the lace at her neck disarranged. The natural bloom had not quite returned to her cheeks. With a look in his eyes that would have mystified Betty for many a day had she but seen it he ran his gaze over the dainty figure. Then reassuring her that she looked as well as ever, he led her ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... that?" and threw his bundle on his back, and went forth. When he came to the hollow tree, he sat down and hung his head. The bees came flying out, and the Queen-bee asked him if he had a stiff neck, since he held his head so awry? "Alas, no," answered the tailor, "something quite different weighs me down," and he told her what the King had demanded of him. The bees began to buzz and hum amongst themselves, and the Queen-bee said, "Just go home again, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... would have dressed their hair awry, but she was good-natured, and arranged it perfectly well. They were almost two days without eating, so much were they transported with joy. They broke above a dozen laces in trying to lace themselves tight, that they might have a fine, slender ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... best on a throne, for his upper part was his best. It was, at least, the mannish part. With scanty red hair much rubbed into disorder, a seamed red face, blotched and shining; with a square jaw awry, the neck and shoulders of a bull; with gnarled gross hands at the end of arms long out of measure, a cruel mouth and a nose like a bird's beak—his features seemed to have been hacked coarsely out of wood and as coarsely painted; but what might have passed by such means for a man ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... man with a pinkly bald head ornamented with fluffs of white hair like cotton wool above his ears, and precise, shaven lips forever awry in the pronouncing of rallying or benevolent sentences; these, with appropriate religious sentiments, formed nine-tenths of his discourse, through which the rare words that revealed his purposes, his desires, flashed like ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... above it, stand clear in our minds of the crowded company with which the poet has begirt their central figures. In all other of his great tragic works,—even in Hamlet, if we have grace and sense to read it aright and not awry,—it is not of any single person or separate passage that we think when we speak of it; it is to the whole masterpiece that the mind turns at mention of its name. The one entire and perfect chrysolite of Othello is neither Othello nor Desdemona ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and jaded. Her hair was carelessly arranged, and her bonnet awry—unerring indications of fathomless female misery. To the anxious inquiry by her parent after her health, she only replied, "Horrid!" Mr. Chiffield wore the aspect of a man who is disappointed in his just expectations. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... whispered Mrs. Wiggs, leaning over so far that she knocked Mrs. Rothchild's bonnet awry. Still Europena stood there, an evident ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... gone awry).... "I am to keep the Russians from Frankfurt, to cover Glogau, and prevent a besieging of Breslau! All that forms an overwhelming problem;—which I, with my whole heart, will give up to somebody abler for it than I am." [Ib. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the mirror into which he had looked last night, shuddering at sight of his own face. The mere fact that he was still in his evening clothes, the white waistcoat wrinkled and the cravat awry, shocked him inexpressibly. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... the confined, crooked streets, amidst several poor-looking houses, stood a narrow high tenement, run up of framework that was much misshapen, with corners and ends awry. It was inhabited by poor people, the poorest of whom looked out from the garret, where, outside the little window, hung in the sunshine an old, dented bird-cage, which had not even a common cage-glass, but only the neck of a bottle inverted, with a cork below, and filled with water. An old maid ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... said Leonard. "Up in the morn hours before the sun, to mass like a choir of novices, to clean our own arms and the Knight's, like so many horse-boys, and if there be but a speck of rust, or a sword-belt half a finger's length awry—" ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and cold, at least by contrast, and the deep, leaden skies were suffused with a peculiar mist that made him see all objects in a distorted fashion. Everything was out of proportion. Some were too large and some too small. Either the world was awry or his own faculties had become discolored and disjointed. While his interest in his daily toil decreased and his thoughts were vague and distant, his curiosity, nevertheless, was keen and concentrated. He knew that something unusual was going to happen and nature ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... it, But how oft on foreign lips it Runs awry; German, tainted, execrated, Is for ages relegated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various

... Prussian-Civil opinion having a strange persuasion that this King has boundless supply of money, and only out of perversity refuses it for objects of moment. In the Army as elsewhere much has gone awry; [See Mollendorf's two or three LETTERS (Preuss, iv. 407-411).] many rivets loose after such a climbing of the Alps as there has been, through dense ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... everything and everybody, in a state of greater confusion than ever, inextricably entangling her inquiries for Sophy with her explanations about the rheumatism which had kept grandmamma from church, and jumping up to pull down the Venetian blind, which descended awry, and went up worse. The lines got into such a hopeless complication, that Albinia came to help her, while Mr. Kendal stood dutifully by the fire, in the sentry-like manner in which he always passed that hour, bending now and then to listen ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... across a bit of the plain and up the long hill crowned by the town, to the pleasing jingle of a chime of rings hung somewhere out of sight beneath the body of the vehicle. When the trundler asked where to drop me, I gave at a venture the name that sounded the best, only to be sure of having guessed awry when he drew up before the inn it designated. The existence of a better was legible on the face of it. We ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... fringes of dark, curling, Celtic lashes. Then the almost classic moulding of her features. She could not escape realising these things. But they meant no more to her than the fact that her nose was not awry, and her lips were not misshapen, and her even, white teeth were perfectly ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... pedlar lying on his back, and writhing in agony. He was a large, powerfully-built man, of middle age, and had been in the full enjoyment of health and vigour, so that his sudden prostration was the more terrible. His face was greatly disfigured, the mouth and neck drawn awry, the left eye pulled down, and the whole power of the same ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... saw him; saw him standing shamefacedly there as if still inclined to break away and run for it; his head hanging down, his big hand moving nervously on the old book-strap which he wore for a belt. The necktie, which presumably Mrs. O'Connor had furnished him, was all awry, and in the half light they could see, too, that his old clothes were faded and torn. He seemed quite indifferent to everybody and everything—even to Mr. Ellsworth—though he smiled nervously ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... of four years old, who was sulking at the window, "what's the matter now? You have been crying again. I see that you have a discontented temper. There is a spot on your petticoat also, and your cap is awry. I fear that you will never become a neat, respectable girl—you that ought to set a good pattern ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... had Christian thought much of these outside things; but she did now—at least she tried her best. There was not a lock unsmoothed in her fair hair, not a fold awry in her silks or laces, and not a trace of agitation visible in her manner or countenance when Mrs. Grey opened her ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... It is either elevated in front like a sophomore's, or depressed on one side, as if he had just come from a cheap spree in the Bowery, or was troubled with some obtrusive "bump" that kept his hat awry. If by chance he gets a seat inside the omnibus, (as "accidents will happen," etc.,) he must cross his legs and wipe the mud from his ill-shod feet upon your trowsers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... her deathbed. Disjointedly and incoherently, but always bitterly, he brooded and piled item on item, until there came to him the memory of the other, the memory of the woman who had first set his life awry. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pale, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... ill-tempered, numbering but one more than MacGregor, growled and swore a little, the weaver declaring that he would not go home. But the rest walked out and left him, and at last, appalled by the silence, he rose with his wig awry, and trotted—he always trotted when he was tipsy—home ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... the engine resting on its bed-plate still keeps its foundation, but some lesser part, the loom or lathe or driving-wheel, which is another way of saying the arrest, the trial or the conviction, goes awry. Sometimes the power-belt is purposely thrown off, the machinery stopped, and a consultation takes place, resulting in a disagreement or a new trial. When the machine is started again, it is started more carefully, with the first experience remembered. Sometimes the rightful material—the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith



Words linked to "Awry" :   crooked, skew-whiff, cockeyed, askew, haywire, wonky, malfunctioning, wrong, amiss, nonfunctional



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