Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Brawny   Listen
adjective
Brawny  adj.  Having large, strong muscles; muscular; fleshy; strong. "Brawny limbs."
Synonyms: Muscular; fleshy; strong; bulky; sinewy; athletic; stalwart; powerful; robust.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Brawny" Quotes from Famous Books



... sound of these shrieks the perplexed parent clasped his hands (his wristbands were open, and on one brawny arm you could see letters tattooed in blue), and, rushing to his apartment, came back with an eau-de-Cologne bottle from his grand silver dressing-case, with the fragrant contents of which he began liberally to sprinkle ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of nibbled sward, Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped; And there they'll sleep the summer night away. By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire. Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws And meek provisions of this ancient State. Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... fear seized George Fielding, the muscles started on his brawny arm as he held it aloft with a heavy stone in it. The black was so hard pressed the last time, and so dead beat, that he could make but a short duck under the fish's back and come out at his tail. The shark did not follow him this time, but ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... smung at his bellows, "And I the unhappiest of all marry'd fellows: I know you have made me a ram, I have seen it, I catch'd you, you Whore, in the critical minute, Fast lock'd in the arms of your lecherous God, Whilst his brawny posteriors went niddity nod; And you, like a Slut, lay as pleased and contented, As if every joint of your body consented; Altho' when you found you were spy'd by your buck, Then you struggl'd and strove like a pig that is stuck, And dismounting your God, would have made your escape, ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... upon the platform, and Leo struck him dead with one blow of his powerful arm, sending the knife right through him. I did the same by another, but Job missed his stroke, and I saw a brawny Amahagger grip him by the middle and whirl him off the rock. The knife not being secured by a thong fell from Job's hand as he did so, and, by a most happy accident for him, lit upon its handle on the rock, just as the body of the Amahagger, who was undermost, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... A peerless son of a giant race, And the eyes of the panther were set in his face: He strode like a stag, and he stood like a pine; Ten feathers he wore of the great Wanmdee;[13] With crimsoned quills of the porcupine His leggins were worked to his brawny knee. The bow he bent was a giant's bow; The swift, red elk could he overtake, And the necklace that girdled his brawny neck Was the polished claws of the great Mato[14] He grappled and slew in the northern snow. Wiwaste ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... a dreamer. Not the conventional sort of a dreamer, who sees beauty in everything but an honest day's work, but a brawny, pick-swinging dreamer who had dug holes in the ground at the end of many rainbows. That he had never yet uncovered the elusive pot of gold didn't seem to bother him in the least; for him, that tender plant called Hope flowered perennially. And now he was bent on following another rainbow; a rainbow ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... lips, while the gorgeous sunshine of the young spring morning beat down upon his bare head, the brawny figure of the mate, his mahogany-tinted face wrinkled into as stiff a grin as if it had been indeed carved out of the wood in question, intervened between his abstracted gaze ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... carried, some of them cruelly wounded and a few dead but all who lived swearing horribly, the prisoners were hustled to the street. Last of all came Monte Joe, securely held by two brawny cow-punchers. At sight of his mottled, blood-besmeared visage, the crowd ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... were plump, not to say brawny—went about him. "Thirty-eight," she announced, after examining the tape. It's long since I have embraced ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... inch; but he seemed somewhat inclined to stoop. Nature had gifted him with an immense head and placed it clean upon his shoulders, for amongst the items of his composition it did not appear that a neck had been included. Arms long and brawny swung at his sides, and the whole of his frame was as strong built and powerful as a wrestler's; his body was supported by a pair of short but very nimble legs. His face was very long, and would have ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... passes over your unconscious head. His dress is designed admirably to suit the exercise. Coat and waistcoat are doffed; the immortal collars are turned down, displaying the columnar throat and the brawny chest; the snow-white shirt-sleeves are turned up to the elbow, disclosing biceps that SAMSON would envy and SANDOW covet. His braces are looped on either side of his supple hips, and his right hand grasps the axe which, a moment ago had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various

... stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender tobaugan, heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among these were displayed the broad antlers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... is now looking over my shoulder is the celebrated thief Palacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain—in a word, the modern Guzman Dalfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal, is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is walking about the room: he wears immense ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... language befriends the grand American expression—it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure to admire their stern serenity of feature—their brawny limbs and various arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... believe in 'ristercrats; I like the honest tan That lies upon the healthful cheek An' speaks the honest man; I like to grasp the brawny hand That labor's lips have kissed, For he who has not labored here Life's greatest ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... huge of limb and broad of shoulder. He was clad in the skins of beasts, and carried in his hand a knotted club. His tangled hair hung down upon his brawny neck, and his fierce eyes gleamed from behind ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... notwithstanding their professions of friendship. Not long after my arrival, a party of trappers arrived from the Upper Missouri in two boats, which were loaded with buffalo and other furs. The stalwart look of these hardy mountaineers proved the hardening effect of their mode of life. They were brawny fellows of a ruddy brown complexion, of the true Indian hue, and habited in skins. These men, I ascertained, had been in the mountains for four or five years, during which time they had subsisted entirely on Buffalo and other ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... social alignment was complete, with the idle, absentee landlord at one end and the migratory and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest; but the brawny logger whose labor had made possible the development of the industry was given, as his share of the spoils, a crumby "bindle" and a rebellious heart. The masters had gained undisputed control of the timber of the country, three quarters of which is located ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... great brawny fellow.' The Haggerty Woman groans. '"My friend," I said at once, "welcome back to Blighty." I make a point of calling it Blighty. "I wonder," I said, "if there is anything I can do for you?" He shook his head. "What regiment?" I asked.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... and addressed some words to his tribe, whereupon two brawny fellows seized Cadurcis, and placed him again, in spite of his struggling, upon his pony, with the same irresistible facility with which they had a few nights before dismounted him. The little lord looked very sulky, but his position was beginning ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... even while with hurried hands he cut open the shirt at the brawny throat and felt for fluttering heart-beat or faintest sign of life. Useless. The shot-hole under the left eye told plainly that the leaden missile had torn its way through the brain and that death must ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... Touarick, stretched along the full length of the very large hut, sweltering in the fulness of his might. The reader will remember the honourable mention made of The Giant in Ghadames. He then raised up his massy head and Atlantean chest, and put out his brawny sinewy arm, and clenched my hand: "Yâkob, the Shânbah have murdered my little son, they are the enemies of man and God, not you Christians. I am going to cut them all to pieces. Last year I killed ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. The real advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... in the very least with his intention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. On the very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, and also of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife, has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something for him. This quickly results in a regular assignation, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... watching harvesters at work, and a foolish envy took hold upon me. To be one of those brawny, brown-necked men, who can string their muscles from dawn to sundown, and go home without an ache to the sound slumber which will make them fresh again for to-morrow's toil! I am a man in the middle years, with limbs shaped as those of another, and subject to no prostrating malady, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... hardy foe in both his hands, In his strong arms Tancred caught him again, And thus each other held and wrapped in bands. With greater might Alcides did not strain The giant Antheus on the Lybian sands, On holdfast knots their brawny arms they cast, And whom he hateth most, each ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... Enos!" exclaimed Anne joyfully. "I'm so glad you've come," and she clasped both hands around his brawny arm as he stepped on the wharf. "And here is Rose," she continued as the elder girl stepped forward to speak ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... to have an effect the very reverse of what I had intended. Perhaps he thought that he had already enough to contend with, without the addition of the brawny arm of the sawyer. I was forcibly lifted up, placed in the coach, and, as it drove rapidly away, I heard, amidst the rattling of the wheels, the cries of her whom I loved as a mother, exclaiming, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... ashamed on 't!" cried Johnnie. He drew himself up to his full height and stretched out a brawny arm. "I ought to have crushed him 'twixt finger and thumb as I would a wasp. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... quarrelsome glances at each other, others shrinking back with tears in their eyes, unequal to the coarse strife. Here, too, were men lean and gaunt with the hunger of a long sea voyage, elbowed aside by some brawny armed woman, who clamored loudly of the children she had left fast locked up in her little place, that she could but just pay the rent for. Here, too, were young girls, children with an aged, worn look, like the fruit that withers to half its size before it ripens. Most heartrending of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... boat, which now was seen to be endowed with an incredible, uncanny rocking movement of its own. Looking beneath, they saw a huge cripple straining himself, Atlas-like, to heave it over. In spite of inferior legs, his brawny shoulders had almost accomplished the feat when he was unceremoniously interrupted. While he sprawled away, a mob of blacks rushed suddenly from the cover of some rocks, the leader of the assailants being Blue Shirt, who had painted his unclad ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... What his hand found to do, he did with his might; even while conscious that he was wronged out of his daily earnings, he worked, and worked hard. At his daily labor he went with a will; with keen, well set eye, brawny chest, lithe figure, and fair sweep of arm, he would have been king among calkers, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... her which way to turn, and for a second or two she stood in the middle of the crossing, uncertain and bewildered. A brawny-looking fellow, apparently a butcher, addressed her; she murmured some thanks, and hastily turned away, taking to the right. She had not gone but a few yards when she saw the entrance to a court which, at least, was certainly as dark as that described by Calabressa. She was half afraid that ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... Jones, erect, rugged, brawny, stood in the full light of the campfire. He had a dark, bronzed, inscrutable face; a stern mouth and square jaw, keen eyes, half-closed from years of searching the wide plains; and deep furrows wrinkling his cheeks. A strange stillness enfolded ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... with its whiskers, And twine so close, that time should never, In life or death, their fortunes sever; But with his rusty sickle mow Both down together at a blow. 280 So learned TALIACOTIUS from The brawny part of porter's bum Cut supplemental noses, which Wou'd last as long as parent breech; But when the date of NOCK was out, 285 Off drop'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... in the cool of the morning, while the mist drifted among the pines and the sun came up behind the forest. The stream ran fast and as they toiled up river a brawny half-breed waded through the shallows with the tracking line. Thirlwell stood in the stern, using the pole, and Agatha noted the smooth precision of his movements. He wasted no effort and did not seem to be working hard, but he did what he meant and the hint of force was plainer than when he talked. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... little lady, ye know better." The big brawny fisherman came nearer to Dotty and scowled at her. "I seen you jumping around there and play-actin' like you was wild with grief! Don't deny it, now! Ye know well enough ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... Townsend was crying softly on the shoulder of Mr. Howard Tate, who was trying vainly to comfort her; they were exchanging "all my fault's" volubly and voluminously. Outside on a snow-covered walk Mr. Cyrus Medill, the Aluminum Man, was being paced slowly up and down between two brawny charioteers, giving vent now to a string of unrepeatables, now to wild pleadings that they'd just let him get at Jumbo. He was facetiously attired for the evening as a wild man of Borneo, and the most exacting stage-manager ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... latter, because she was a beautiful woman; and his allusions to them rank with the finest parts in his or any poetry. He seemed especially adapted to be the poet-laureate of Wallace—a modern edition, somewhat improved, of the broad, brawny, ragged bard who actually, it is probable, attended in the train of Scotland's patriot hero, and whose constant occupation it was to change the gold of his achievements into the silver of song. Scottish manners, too, as well as history, exerted a powerful influence ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... lending courage to a desperate act. With stealthy tread she crept up to the bed, her hand fumbled for a moment in the folds of her dress, then drew out a syringe. Deftly, and with practiced hand, she thrust the hypodermic needle into the brawny arm which, once so valiant in the fight, lay helpless ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... certainly very effectual towards its purpose. I have often been amused to see the merry style in which they employed great lumps of coarse soap and hard brushes, in vain endeavours to remove the umber tints of tar from their hands, and the tanning of the sunshine from their brawny arms. These indelible distinctions of their hard service are rendered more striking at such moments by their contrast with the firm and healthy whiteness of the skin round their ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... reasons (I was bound to admit) carried some weight with them. He said, first, that it was wrong to kill those who had received us with so generous a hospitality; and secondly, that, as I am no longer immortal, this brawny savage, with hair so curiously coiled and matted over his brain-pan, might kill me; and thirdly, that the whole affair might indirectly lead to his, Zeus', personal inconvenience. Here then is enjoyment by one door quite shut ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... giants, as ye are! the strength of brass in your toughened sinews; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet odors from his curly locks, shall come, and with his lily fingers pat your brawny shoulders, and bet his sesterces upon your blood! Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted meat; but tomorrow he shall break his fast upon your flesh; and ye shall be a dainty meal ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... voice of the signal gun rolled down through the screaming wind to the twelve warriors upon the roof. Boom! Twelve swords were raised above twelve brawny shoulders. Boom! Twelve keen edges severed twelve complaining moorings, clean ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!—That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... wide-flaring, ending at his brawny bare knees, with wide-cut, limp leather boots flapping about his calves in ancient piratical fashion. They had flaring soles, these shoes, for walking upon the Lowland caked ooze. The uppers were useless: I rather think he wore them because they were picturesque. He was a handsome fellow, with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... swung past the aviation field and neared the Oakwood Heights station, a train pulled out. Down the road came tramping a workingman in overalls and jumper, with a canvas bag of tools swinging from his brawny right hand. As he walked, striding along with splendid energy, he whistled to himself—no cheap ragtime air, but Handel's Largo, with an appreciation which bespoke musical feeling ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... sat down, and, putting his hands on the kitchen table, hid his face in them, and by the working of his brawny shoulders I knew how much he was affected. We left him to the care of our old cook, Betsy Treggle, who, we knew, could minister to his sorrow better than we could, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... marble supper-room, amid the debris of the feast that the Duke's Seneschal had laid out for them. The floor was paved with Magnums and Maximums of the best Heidanseekerer champagne, most of them as empty as the foolish head of the Duchess of AVADRYNKE, which was at that moment reposing upon the brawny chest of Lord PODOPHLIN, the celebrated No. 5 of the Oxbridge Crew. On a raised dais at the end of the room the ladies of the Tarara corps de ballet were performing the final steps of the Sinuous Shadow-dance, specially dedicated to the Oxbridge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various

... the ken of the sentinels in the Fort, when a single warrior rose before us as from the ground, and blocked the path. He was a short, sturdy savage, bare to the waist save for a chain of teeth which dangled with sinister gleam about his brawny throat, and, from the wide sweep of his shoulders, evidently possessed of prodigious strength. He held a gun extended in front of him, and made a gesture of warning impossible ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... didn't you want to know the way?" she gasped, impulsively grasping his big, brawny hand. "Wouldn't you like to ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... the trial of Parnell v. the "Times." Other drawings, that attracted general attention, followed in rapid succession. Who that has seen it can forget the "Fancy Portrait" (by induction) "of my Laundress"—a brawny-armed woman standing over his shirts, which she belabours with a spike-studded club? or the "Automatic Policeman" at a crowded crossing, which, when a penny is dropped into the slot, puts up its arm ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled from an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen," said she, "they are coming." "But who will take care of you?" asked Foster. "This gentleman ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... know; all right, my boy, all right," interrupted the kind-hearted, old fellow, stopping any further attempt to speak on my part; and the brawny corporal of marines at the same instant lifting me up in his arms as if I were a baby, I lost consciousness, the last thing I recollect hearing being the doctor's voice, sounding, though, far away as if a mile off, like a voice in ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... I went together. The captain, an enormous brawny Celt, with superhuman whiskers and a shock of the fieriest hair, had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... sit at supper as they might have sat. Rubens and the Venetian Painters did neither one thing nor the other: their Holy figures are neither ideal nor real: and it is incongruous to see one of Rubens' brawny boors dressed up in the ideal red and blue drapery with which the early Italians clothed their figures of Christ. But enough of all this. I have seen Trench's Sabbation, and like it much: how do you like those centuries of couplets, which are a German fashion? ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... but did not the fire flash into his honest eyes, and leap into his swarthy cheek, and nerve his brawny arm, and clinch his horny fist, as he marched straightway up to the doomed offender, fiercely denounced his dishonesty, and violently demanded redress? Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, and eagerness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... but one thought in life, and that was to defend his gracious queen. He slept at the door of Cleopatra's tent, a naked sword at his side, held in his clenched and brawny hand. ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... distinguish the Turkish and Egyptian sailors in the enemy's ships. They seemed to be a motley group. Most of them wore turbans of white, with a red cap below, small brown jackets, and very wide trousers; their legs were bare. They were active, brawny fellows, of a dark-brown complexion, and they crowded the Turkish ships, which accounts for the very great slaughter we occasioned among them. Many dead bodies were tumbled through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... all ages and the most varied attitudes, and reproducing with singular vividness the Italian soldiers of adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the parti-coloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... without a guard, but did condescend to wear his revolvers. He says that the first thing he saw as he entered the court room were six big, brawny cavalrymen, each one a picked man, selected for bravery and determination. Of course each trooper was armed with large government revolvers and a belt full of cartridges. He also saw that they were sitting near, and where ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... feel you haven't a friend on earth outside of your family, who sometimes are queer also, you're apt to be a trial to those you come in contact with. For two whole days I stayed in my room and thought of nothing but a big, brawny, domineering, dictating girl from the West who was giving Billy no time to write letters; and though I would die before I would let anybody know it, even Jess, I nearly cried my eyes out under the bedclothes ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... stated that officials thought Jacob entirely too aged to enter the service as he had a few scattered white hairs but he remembers he was brawny and unafraid. Isaac was too young but the other two uncles were accepted. One never returned because he was killed in battle but one fought throughout the war and was never wounded. He remembers ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... farm servants are engaged; those who wish to try a change of masters, or hire themselves merely for the harvest, assemble in the open space near the church, and then offer to those who require them, their brawny arms, and their farming acquirements. The most celebrated of these fairs is that held on the First of September, to which whole hamlets send all their able-bodied men and women, who hire themselves to the great proprietors for the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... the Doctor found the boy standing in the very heart of the great plant, where the brawny workmen, naked to the waist—their bodies shining with sweat and streaked with grime, wrestled with the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the head-borough, who happened to be his maltster master. He wisely fled, and shortly after enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards, and ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... truly in my Judgment there, than with those brawny, swill-belly'd Monks. They are no Capons, I'll assure you, whatever you may think of them. They are call'd Fathers, and they commonly make good their Calling to the very Letter. Time was when Maids liv'd no where honester than at home with their Parents, when the only spiritual Father they ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... to their senses a moment later to find themselves held firmly by brawny peacemakers, the black cars rushing swiftly by ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon

... Donald Gordon, who was the son of a well-to-do business man, and had been to college, until he was expelled for taking the doctrines of Christianity too literally and expounding them too persistently on the college campus. There was a big, brawny lumber-jack from the North, Jim Henderson by name, who had been driven out of the camps for the same reason, and had appalling stories to tell of the cruelties and hardships of the life of a logger. There was a Swedish ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... o'er the flood: When with his brawny breast he cuts the waves, His shoulder scarce ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... let me git at him, cap'n!" came from Bahama Bill, who was being held back by Fred and Songbird. "I'll show him wot I think o' sech a measly scoundrel!" And he shook his brawny fist at ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... to overflowing—full of brawny rough, and grisly men; full of ribald songs and maudlin curses; full of foul atmospheres, impregnated with the fumes of vile whisky, and worse tobacco, and full of sights and scenes, exciting ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... windows you look down upon a sea, a kind of whirlpool, of melancholy grey mountains. Then there are the people, dark, bushy-bearded men, riding about like brigands, wrapped in green-lined cloaks upon their shaggy pack-mules; or loitering about, great, brawny, low-headed youngsters, like the parti-colored bravos in Signorelli's frescoes; the beautiful boys, like so many young Raphaels, with eyes like the eyes of bullocks, and the huge women, Madonnas or St. Elizabeths, as the case may be, with their clogs firmly ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... thick-set man, with brawny arms, and a head unnaturally large, embellished by a profusion of red hair, and a beard of at least a week's growth. The expression of his face, surly in the extreme, would have been decidedly bad, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... table were gathered Hugo himself, his guests Raoul de Broc, Tustain de Wylmcote, Ralph de Bearleigh, his seneschal, chamberlain, and other confidential officers of his household, and four strong brawny men-at-arms—sufficient to manage the prisoner ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... knowing full well that he could not hope to cope with the brawny canvasmen single handed and alone. Starting off on a run, Phil was followed instantly, as he felt sure he would be, but managing to keep just ahead of ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... Cleveland replied, slowly. "But I'm afraid that there's more, and worse." He opened a space-suit reverently, revealing the face; a face calm and peaceful, but utterly, sickeningly white. Still reverently, he made a deep incision in the brawny neck, severing the jugular vein, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cooking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... to them the cap and coarse gray trowsers of the convict. A phrenologist would have attentively studied these ghastly and bronzed faces, with their flat foreheads, their cruel and insidious glances, wicked mouths, and brawny necks; almost all offered a frightful resemblance to the brute. On the cunning features of this, one would find the subtle perfidy of the fox; on another, the sanguinary rapacity of the bird of prey; on a third, the ferocity of the tiger; and on another, again, the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at Pilgrims' Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to Jim-Jim to bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight towards a clump of sugar-bush ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard

... vessels first, with speedy care, His plenteous stores do seasoned timber send; Thither the brawny carpenters repair, And as the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... an hour later, figures came very cautiously toward the spaceboat. Thal was their leader. His expression was mournful and depressed. Other brawny retainers came uncertainly behind him. At a nod from Thal, two of them picked up Derec and carted ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... preaching in Jeloo. Instantly a woman called out, "And have you heard those deceivers preach?" "Yes," was the reply, "both last year and this, and hope I shall again." Hearing this, her eyes flashed, and drawing her brawny arms into the form of a dagger, with a vengeful thrust of her imaginary weapon, she cried, "The blood of thy father smite thee, thou Satan!" and dreadful was the volley of oaths and curses that followed. Yet she was only a fair ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... steep, crooked steps that led away from all the glitter and splendor above, into black depths, lit only by fierce glow of undying fires. Brawny, half-naked figures fed and stirred the roaring flames; the huge boilers hissed, the engines panted; but through all the darkness and discord came the measured beat of the ship's pulse that told there was no shirk or kick,—that all this mighty ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... practicable intervals, whenever the labor could be constrained to it. Possibly this urgency had no ill results except in one or two individual cases. The sons of toil are indurated to hardship, and most of the gang were brawny Irish ditchers. Jubal Clenk, already outworn with age and ill nourished throughout a meagre life, unaccustomed, too, to exposure to the elements (for the industry of moonshining is a sheltered and well-warmed business), was the only notable collapse. He began by querulously demanding of anyone ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... enough a few days ago, when re-reading "Kilmeny." There may be beautiful passages in it; but it is not coherent, not natural, not honest. It is throughout an affectation of the Manichaean sentimental-sublime, which God never yet put into the heart of any brawny, long-headed, practical Borderer, and which he therefore probably put into his own head, or, as we call it, affected, for the time being; a method of poetry writing which comes forth out of nothing, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... he done, teacher. He took the best, and when he got tired on't, he threw it away,"—the brawny hand at George Olver's side was clinched so as to appear almost colorless, yet there was little discomposure in his voice—"but cursin' him ain't a goin' to help us now. When a thing that's allays been precious to us has once fell, we can't never ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... gave a golden ring, While coldly glanced his eye of blue, As frozen drop of wintry dew. Douglas would speak, but in his breast His struggling soul his words suppressed; Indignant then he turned him where Their arms the brawny yeomen bare, To hurl the massive bar in air. When each his utmost strength had shown, The Douglas rent an earth-fast stone From its deep bed, then heaved it high, And sent the fragment through the sky A rood beyond the farthest mark; And still in Stirling's ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... steers, by brawny ploughmen broke, And join'd reluctant to the galling yoke, Alike disdain with servile necks to bear Th' unwonted weight, or drag the crooked share, But rend the reins, and bound a different way, And all the furrows in confusion lay: Such ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... has come; the larva is brawny enough not to dread the movements of the caterpillars' bodies. Besides, the caterpillars, mortified by fasting and weakened by a prolonged torpor, become more and more incapable of defence. The perils of the tender babe are succeeded by the security of the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... of the canoe, as the Indians, with brawny arms, paddled over the mirrored surface of the stream, was soothing and grateful to the languid, yet convalescent patient. In the cool of the beautiful mornings they could glide along the stream for a few leagues, ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... Ezra glanced round and saw his rival standing behind him. He gave a bitter curse, and whispered something to his half-drunken companion. The latter turned, and with an inarticulate cry, like a wild beast, rushed at the young man and seized him by the throat with his brawny hands. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... one glance at Scarterfield's visitor to assure me that he was a person who had used the sea. There was the suggestion of salt water and strong winds all over him, from his grizzled hair and beard to his big, brawny hands and square set build; he looked the sort of man who all his life had been looking out across wide stretches of ocean and battling with the forces of Nature in her roughest moods. Just then there was questioning in his ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, Three scythes ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... curious information about Old Nick. What Robert Burns says of him in Tam O'Shanter is only a faint reminiscence of the wealth of demonology which existed a few generations earlier. Old Nick used to appear at the witches' Sabbaths in the form of a goat, or a brawny black man, who courted all the pretty young witches and made them submit to his embraces. Some of these crazy creatures, under examination or torture, gave the most circumstantial accounts of their intercourse with Satan; their revelations being of such an obscene character that they ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... the next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited me to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal soldier of the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange oaths acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if they were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to his notion war was God's best gift to man. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... added eloquence to colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was waving his hand above his head, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... and rubbing the dried mud out of his kilts. The horses were munching in their nose-bags, and the driver had disappeared. The Americans hadn't happened to meet with any Highlanders before, and were curious. This one must be a good fighter, they thought; a brawny giant with a bulldog jaw, and a face as red and knobby as his knees. More because he admired the looks of the man than because he needed information, Hicks went up and asked him if he had noticed a military cemetery on the road ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... and the brawny, dark-skinned Siwash, who spoke English reasonably well, merely grunted. Unless it seemed necessary, he seldom said anything at all. Bred to the sea, and living on the seal and salmon, an additional hazard or two or an extra strain on his tough body did not count for much with him. He ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... highly successful in carrying out his intention. Most writers would have contented themselves with composing the female portion of the brigands' society, of some dark-browed Italian contadina, with flashing eyes and jetty ringlets, a knife in her garter and a mousquetoon in her brawny fist, and a dozen crucifixes and amulets round her neck. At most, one might have expected to meet with some English lady in a green veil, (all English ladies, who travel, wear green veils,) whose carriage had been attacked, and herself carried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various



Words linked to "Brawny" :   brawn, sinewy, strong



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com