Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Crooked   Listen
adjective
Crooked  adj.  
1.
Characterized by a crook or curve; not straight; turning; bent; twisted; deformed. "Crooked paths." "he is deformed, crooked, old, and sere."
2.
Not straightforward; deviating from rectitude; distorted from the right. "They are a perverse and crooked generation."
3.
False; dishonest; fraudulent; as, crooked dealings.
Crooked whisky, whisky on which the payment of duty has been fraudulently evaded. (Slang, U.S.)






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





"Crooked" Quotes from Famous Books



... form a well-cut cloud he threw, Made of the blackest fleece of night, And close-wrought to keep in the powerful light; Yet, wrought so fine, it hindered not his flight, But through the key-holes and the chinks of doors, And through the narrowest walks of crooked pores, He passed more swift and free Than in wide air the wanton swallows flee: He took a pointed pestilence in his hand, The spirits of thousand mortal poisons made The strongly-tempered blade, The sharpest sword that e'er was laid Up in the magazines of God ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... said the corporal, shutting the door. My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; and, had it not been that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line as a crooked one, he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor LeFevre and his boy the whole ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... and his guide pushed on, fighting the cold and the snow. Up over the Height of Land, to the Hudson Bay Post at the head of the Parsnip, where I was making my headquarters, and where I had lain snowbound for ten days. It was during the descent of Crooked River, a quick water, treacherous stream, whose thin ice was covered with snow, that the accident happened that cost me the loss of the location, and nearly cost Clen his life. The Indian guide was mushing before, bent low ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... another plank, distinct from the table, whereon was exhibited an array of saws and knives of various and peculiar shapes and sizes; also, a sort of steel, something like the dinner-table implement, together with long needles, crooked at the end for taking up the arteries, and large darning-needles, thread and bee's-wax, for sewing up ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... we belonged to each other—and I let you go! It's fabulous. I've fought for things since that weren't worth a crooked sixpence; fought as well as other men. And you—you—I lost you because I couldn't face a scene! Hang it, suppose there'd been a dozen scenes—I might have survived them. Men have been known ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... to the differences of the sexes before the sexual appetite is developed. It is, however, the first signs of this appetite which concentrate the attention on these differences, for in their absence, the boy is more indifferent to them than to the straight or crooked form of a nose. Man has the habit of passing by without notice anything which does not interest him, and this is why we find, in individuals whose sexual appetite is developed late or feebly, an indifference and ignorance in these ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... that were there now were probably not Cornishmen at all—strangers, Londoners perhaps. They could watch that wonderful, ever-changing view of sea and cliff and moor without any beating of the heart; to them the crooked, dusky windings of the Cove, the mighty grey rocks of Trelennan's Jump, the strange, solemn permanency of the four grey stones on the moor, were as nothing; their hearts ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... preliminaries signed; and all Nations are longing for the like. "Let us have a German Treaty for general Peace," said the Kurprinz of Saxony, that amiable Heir-Apparent whom we have seen sometimes, who is rather crooked of back, but has a sprightly Wife. "By all means," answered Polish Majesty: "and as I am in the distance, do you in every way further it, my Son!" Whereupon despatch of Fritsch to Vienna, and thence to Meissen; with "Yes" to him from both ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and out under lofty cliffs that are smothered in vines and foliage, and around the edges of bottomless chasms; and all the way one glides by files of picturesque natives, some carrying burdens up, others going down from their work ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... worthy appeared pretentiously dressed in the pink of Desert fashion—a scarlet cloak, sheepskin-lined, and bearing a huge patch of blue cloth between the shoulders; a crimson caftan, and red morocco boots with irons resembling ice-cramps at the heels. Like 'Brahim, he uses his Bkr, or crooked stick, to trace lines and dots upon the ground; similarly, the Yankee whittles to hide the trick that lurks in his eyes. Khizr tents in the Hism, and his manners are wild and rough as his dwelling-place; possibly manly, brusque certainly, like the Desert Druzes of the Jebel ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... work tofore Hath there been rear'd. One parcel of that tower[75] Yet stands, which eating time could not devour: A strong turret, compact of stone and rock, Hugy without, but horrible within: To pass to which, by force of handy stroke, A crooked strait is made, that enters in, And leads into this ugly loathsome place. Within the which, carved into the ground, A deep dungeon[76] there runs of narrow space. Dreadful and dark, where never light is found: Into this hollow cave, by cruel hest Of King Tancred, were divers ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... she said, with a droll twist to the corner of her mouth. "Never mind, Mollie, it's worth a quarter just for seeing crooked!" ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... is crooked can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house, limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways—Jane, I mean, or Mabel—could ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... might be anything crooked or wrong, knowing his old, black quack of a father. But he seems to be clean stuff all through. He looks it. He acts it. He carries himself like it. And he talks it. I had a little confab with him out in the smoking-room, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... these paltry sophistries; look back to your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable courage—your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked, path. Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have inflicted on the few. I know not why I thus address you: but something diviner than indignation urges me; something ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... made a vow, I know, which is, Whilst you are young, you will have all the youth To follow you with lies and flatteries. Fool, they'll deceive you; when this colour fades, Which will not always last, and you go crooked, As if you sought your beauty, lost i' th' ground, Then they will laugh ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... rear for miles without detecting any sign of animate life. From our elevation, the plain dipped away in every direction. Far to the east, the depression seemed as real as a trough in the ocean when seen from the deck of a ship. The meanderings of this divide were as crooked as a river, and as we surveyed its course one of Bob's men sighted with the naked eye two specks fully five miles distant to the northwest, and evidently in the vicinity of the old trail. The wagon was in plain view, and leaving three ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... still held his hand, but he said nothing. There were many things he wanted to say. He had gone crooked where this boy must go straight. He had erred, and the boy must avoid his errors. He had cherished enmities, and in his age they cherished him. And now— "May I ask you ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... almost barricaded by the fallen timbers. The steps of the arbour and the planks of the floor had sunk, and rotten planks cracked under her feet. Of its original furniture there was nothing left but two moss-grown benches and a crooked table. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... Still, he was missed and lamented in speech, and even in eloquent speeches, having been a very strong Justice of the Peace, as well as the foremost of riotous gentlemen keeping the order of the county. He stood above them in his firm resolve to have his own way always, and his way was so crooked that the difficulty was to get out of it and let him have it. And when he was dead, it was either too good or too bad to believe in; and even after he was buried it was held that this might be only another of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... more. The car rattled down into the little town, with its crooked, paved streets and its countless smells. Clair was the center of a farming community, and, in some cases, the human inhabitants and the dumb ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson

... advantages. Every time I look at all these trenches an holes I feel sorry for the poor fello what had to dig them. Whoever laid em out didnt seem to have much idear of where he wanted to go. Most of them wander around awhile an come back to where they started. All of them are as crooked as a plummers assistant. If anyone asks you where a place is around here your safe in ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... Bettina who suggested a way out—Bettina, who had sat back as pale as Tish and heard that her Mr. Ellis was, as Charlie Sands said later, as crooked as ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... undertook to pilot this most inexorable young woman among the antiquities of our venerable city. She is an inveterate relic-hunter; is enraptured with Bunker Hill and the Old South; delights in Cornhill, and wherever she can find a crooked old street that reminds her of Washington; and pokes about all the old cemeteries, until I feel as eerie as Coleridge's ancient mariner. I believe she expects to come upon all the Pilgrim Fathers buried in one vault. But there is nothing special on the programme ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... stout we got for him with such difficulty, from supplies, he faced the awful daily dressing of his shattered leg without flinching, pretending to great comfort and an excellent position of his splint, which his crooked leg and ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... exclaimed Heise, delighted at his success. "Come on, boys, now let's drink." Their elbows crooked and they ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... been standing. I stooped and picked it up. To my great surprise it was not my ruby ear-ring. It was a small oval locket suspended from a few links of a heavy gold chain, one of the uppermost links was crooked ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... ours is hidden away, shut in by the hills—and yet for all that it has no doubt its local feminine beauty and its local masculine ambition just as all other towns. Only it is such a queer, outlandish life that is lived here, with little crooked fingers, with eyes as of a mouse, and ears filled day and night with the eternal rushing of the waters. A beetle on its way in the heather, a stub of yellow grass sticks up here and there—huge trees they seem to the beetle's eye! Two local ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... eyes for her alone (as Malavika, too, had noticed when she entered the water-house). The viduschaka has proved an unreliable sentinel; he has fallen asleep at the door of the house. The queen's maid perceives this and, to tease him, touches him with a crooked staff. He awakes crying that a snake has bitten him. The king runs out and is confronted again by Iravati. "Well, well!" she exclaims, "this couple meet in broad daylight and without hindrance to gratify their wishes!" "An unheard-of greeting is this, my dear," said the king. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... jack-stay iron was heated, and with this we could burn a hole to any size required. So we had, after all, quite a kit to go on with. Clamps, such as are used by boat builders, we had not, but made substitutes from the crooked guava tree and ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... turn in the crooked way a halt was called, and a fresh series of hails went echoing on before them; but not so much as a whisper of an ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane, and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past, and which, both in its original design and present condition, is a noble specimen of its order. A pair of massy ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens

... town of O——, and remained there for good, having now lost once for all every hope of leaving Russia, which he detested. He gained his poor livelihood somehow by lessons. Lemm's exterior was not prepossessing. He was short and bent, with crooked shoulders, and contracted chest, with large flat feet, and bluish white nails on the gnarled bony fingers of his sinewy red hands. He had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and compressed lips, which he was for ever twitching and biting; and this, together with his habitual taciturnity, produced ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... awkward in the school-room, as she would be while taking her cup of tea from Lady Barbara, or handing the butter to her governess. And was it not wretched to be ordered to do it again, and again, and again, (each time worse than the last- -the fingers more crooked, the elbow more stuck out, the shoulder more forward than before), when there was a letter in Sylvia's writing lying ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... began; and there being but one desk and that the master's, each boy sat at it in turn and laboured at his crooked copy, while the master walked about. This was a quieter time; for he would come and look over the writer's shoulder, and tell him mildly to observe how such a letter was turned in such a copy on the wall, and bid him take it for his model. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... wild Albanian kirtled to his knee, With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun, And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see: The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon; The Delhi with his cap of terror on, And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek; And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son; The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak, Master of all around, too ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... behind me; the dark was lightness and the crooked straight. All the future lay clear ahead it presented no difficulties yet; a mad, ecstatic confidence was mine for the wildest, happiest moments of ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... will not hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; Stigmatical in making, worse ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... The hair, rank of growth, thick and unkempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotches of gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locks of lustreless black—locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers, heavy and solid. The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and in others massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashed with gray. They rioted monstrously over his face and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... wishing that he had the sense he was born with. He'll have to be up at 6:05, and he knows how he will feel. He also knows how he will feel along about three o'clock in the afternoon. Smithers is coming then to close up that deal. Smithers is as sharp as tacks, as slippery as an eel, and as crooked as a dog's hind leg. Always looking for the best of it. You need all your wits when you deal with Smithers. Why didn't he take Mrs. General Public's advice, and get to bed instead of sitting up fuddling himself with that ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... God. Speak comfortably to My people. Come, said Goodwill, and I will teach thee about the way thou must go. Look before thee, dost thou see that narrow way? That is the way thou must go. And then thou mayest always distinguish the right way from the wrong. The wrong is crooked and wide, and the right is straight as a rule can make ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... never to marry the child nor the godmother, nor the godmother the child or the godfather: but, which is strange, they say the mother of the child and the godfather may marry. By and by the Lady Bills come in, a well- bred but crooked woman. The poor people of the house had good wine, and a good cake; and she a pretty woman in her lying-in dress. It cost me near 40s. the whole christening: to midwife 20s., nurse 10s., maid 2s. 6d., and the coach 5s. The business of buying off the Chimney-money is passed in the House; and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... clustered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 3/4 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. Stem: A tall, crooked shrub. Leaves: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. Fruit: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (Hama together ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... narrow, crooked streets, out upon the "neutral ground," and up to the gardens; bought an English newspaper; then, going back to the ship, looked up at the frowning rock threaded by those English galleries, which, upon occasion, can pour forth from their windows ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... like a lily with a crooked stem. A broad blossom terminates it at its upper end; a button of a bud projects from the stalk a little below the blossom, on the left-hand side. The broad blossom is the Delta, extending from Aboosir to Tineh, a direct distance of a hundred ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... the sailors, and the depths were new: Trees rudely hollowed did the waves sustain, Ere ships in triumph plough'd the watery plain. Then landmarks limited to each his right; For all before was common as the light. Nor was the ground alone required to bear Her annual income to the crooked share; But greedy mortals, rummaging her store, Digged from her entrails first the precious ore; (Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid), And that alluring ill to sight displayed: Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold, Gave mischief birth, and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... write down the heading of "Rules of My Life" before proceeding to their detailed inscription. Accordingly, I proceeded to write "Rules of My Life" on the outside of the six sheets of paper which I had made into a sort of folio, but the words came out in such a crooked and uneven scrawl that for long I sat debating the question, "Shall I write them again?"—for long, sat in agonised contemplation of the ragged handwriting and disfigured title-page. Why was it that all the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... a time he added: "The south road is so crooked that we don't command it very far, therefore look sharp. Back to your post!" he stormed as Perdue looked up from his loop-hole. "This is ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... rain storm, half starved, lame, and tired. I suppose this trip ranks anything of the kind since the days of Henry. I am sure mortals never suffered more than us. After leaving the Sault, disappointment, hunger, and fatigue, were our constant companions. The children of Israel traveled a crooked road, 'tis said, but I think it was ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... and she would warn Rose about the rooms downstairs, the dining-room with the black chairs, the soft carpet, and the stuffed birds in glass cases—for these things, too, she had names. Here was the hand of death and destruction, the land of crooked stairs, sudden dark doors, mysterious bells and drippings of water—out of all this her ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... he said, with perfect amiability. "Hand me all the stuff I'm asking, and your market's as sacred as a woman's virtue. But you don't hand it me, or maybe you can't. Well, it's up to me to supply my needs any way I know. There's nothing crooked in that. If you're reckoning to squeeze my market you can't kick if I try to open it wide. You see, Brand, this stuff grows. I guess it grows in plenty, because you admit you trade it, and I know the Northern neche well enough to guess he only trades sufficient for his needs. See? ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... by which she had descended, a man now advances into the garden, and walks towards the place she occupies. His gait is limping, his stature crooked, his proportions distorted. His large, angular features stand out in gaunt contrast to his shrivelled cheeks. His dry, matted hair has been burnt by the sun into a strange tawny brown. His expression is one of fixed, stern, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... long files of Russian and Prussian foragers, and long trains of Austrian baggage waggons, winding slowly through the crowd; idle soldiers of all services, French as well as allied, lounging about in their loose great coats and trowsers, with long crooked pipes hanging from their mouths; patroles of infantry parading about under arms, composed half of Russian grenadiers, and half of Parisian national guards; Russian coaches and four, answering to the description of Dr Clarke, the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... her hand and examined the forefinger, where the nail had grown back a little crooked. "You mustn't trim it down close at the corner there, and then it will grow straight. You won't want it crooked when you're a big girl and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... things were necessary to complete my work, I sent Fritz and Jack to Tent House for the sledge, to convey it there, that we might finish it more conveniently. I had the good fortune to meet with some very hard, crooked wood, the natural curve of which would be admirably suitable for supporting the sides of the boat. We found also a resinous tree, which distilled a sort of pitch, easy to manage, and which soon hardened in the sun. My wife and Francis collected ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... my crumpled horn," went on the cow, and she showed the rabbit gentleman how one of her horns was all crumpled and crooked and twisted, just like a corkscrew that is used to pull hard ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis

... repeated these blood-curdling questions he would look first one and then another of his listeners in the eyes, with his bands drawn up in front of his breast, his fingers turned out and crooked like claws, while he bent with each question closer to the shrinking forms before him. The tone was sepulchral, with awful pause as if waiting each time for a reply. The culmination came with a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... his thumb crooked to indicate the place, which was superfluous; for near the middle of the front page, top of column and in the strong type of captions, the words leaped out to Peter's eye as though hand-illumined in ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... waiting for him while he drank. She pulled at the reins, but loosed them, for to turn and escape now was ridiculous; and riding boldly round the rock, she came upon him by the spring. One of his arms hung up to its elbow in the pool, the other was crooked beside his head, but the face was sunk downward against the shelving rock, so that she saw only his black, tangled hair. As her horse snorted and tossed his head she looked swiftly at Monte, as if to question him. Seeing now the sweat matted on his coat, and noting the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... the palace gate to watch for the princess. Soon she came to the balcony and leaned over the railing. She was very beautiful, but her nose was just a tiny bit crooked. She did not compare at all with the ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells

... grantha, while the other shielded anywheres, Totts was conducted to those words. "Out with grantha," commanded Jesse. "We'll keep it grandfather for a while yet, Mr. Bean Talk." They attempted to defend their lists, but vainly; and in the conflict that arose, a rubber flew crooked and hit one of the great West sharply in the back of the neck. He, being under a misapprehension, thereupon kicked his neighbor savagely, and in a moment all the profound scholars engaged together in a blind war, rubbing out one another's lists, whacking one another's heads, ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... the true direction of the wind and of the tide. He contented himself with marking a rude outline of his course on his memorandum book, making allowance for the time when he turned on that course; and having summed it all up to his own satisfaction in a crooked line which looked like a slip-knot, he turned his attention ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... and we had to cut great quantities of wood away so as to approach the water easily. The tea-tree is the only timber here for firewood; many trees are of some size, being seven or eight inches through, but mostly very crooked and gnarled. The green wood appears to burn almost as well as the dead, and forms good ash for baking dampers. Again to-day we had our usual shock of earthquake and at the usual time. Next day at three p.m., earthquake, quivering ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... a good eighteen-mile ride to Valley Forge over the crooked Perkiomen road, which, was none the better for the breaking up of the frost. I rode along with a light heart, but I was watchful, being so used to disastrous adventures. Happily, I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... crooked finger, stabbed my ancestor, Kenneth of the flat nose, as he dined with him in this hall in the reign of Fergus the First—give me back ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... visited Sonoma, Mendocino, and other counties in that locality. A kindly reception awaited me everywhere, and no wonder—I petitioned the Lord to go before me. He answers such a petition out of Isa. 45:2: "I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... Princess's quarters (the building was a huge one, and accommodated almost a city of noble retainers of the family); but the infatuated young fool would not budge, although he had not even the excuse of love for staying. 'How she squints,' he would say of the Princess, 'and how crooked she is! She thinks no one can perceive her deformity. She writes me verses out of Gresset or Crebillon, and fancies I believe them to be original. Bah! they are no more her own than her hair is!' ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... quickly and became graceful in his movements, although his feet were clumsy and his ankles crooked, his mouth large and forehead broad; but he still had no teeth or claws. Then Mielikki said: "I would give thee claws and teeth, Otso, but I fear that thou wilt use them to harm people with." But Otso fell ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... no stopping him. With a heavy crooked cane in his strong hand and the perspiration running from his handsome face, he staggered toward the spot where I was sitting. And yet, though he had raised his stick to strike the chandelier above the next table and had ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... of B'hamdun, where Dr. De Forest's school is established, is on the side of a lofty mountain. It is nearly 4000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. The village is compact as a little city, the streets narrow, rocky and crooked, the houses flat-roofed, and the floors of mud. One of the Protestants, the father of Miriam Tabet, has built a fine large house with glass windows and paved floors, which is one of the best houses in that part of Lebanon. The village is surrounded ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder-box, were all that they contained, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... through the laths that some men were looking for somebody. They were going from room to room, and soon came into mine, tearing down the sheet which was hung up for a door. They crowded in and came straight to the bed, and the leader, a big man with a crooked nose, seized me by the ear as if he were taking hold of a bootstrap. I sat up, and another poked a lantern ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... have somewhat round or pyramid-shaped tops, varying in detail with the variety of apple tree. The twigs are short and usually crooked. The fruit twigs are called spurs. The buds at the ends of the twigs and spurs are the largest and contain both leaves and blossoms, and there are usually several blossoms in each bud. The bud scales burst apart ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... person of note in the clerical world of Combray. Above a mantle of black cloth she wore a little white coif that seemed almost to attach her to some Order, and an infirmity of the skin had stained part of her cheeks and her crooked nose the bright red colour of balsam. Her visits were the one great distraction in the life of my aunt Leonie, who now saw hardly anyone else, except the reverend Cure. My aunt had by degrees erased every other visitor's name from her list, because they all committed ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... head suggested the body confirmed, for he was not framed to labor. The burden of the noble head had bowed the slender throat and crooked the shoulders, and when he moved his arm it seemed the arm of a skeleton too loosely clad. There was a differing connotation in the hands, to be sure. They were thin—bones and sinews chiefly, with the violet of the veins showing along the backs; but they ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... quick. I shall never get over. Oh, Frederic!" That morning she had promised that she would call him Frederic. Even Daniel could not think it wrong that she should call her cousin by his Christian name. "It's no good, I can't do that one,—it's crooked. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... that-a-way. Course, she's set Monty to watch, an' he's gone off a-fishin'. That's as plain as a pike-staff. Pshaw! Folks so poor they can't feed their stawk hain't a right to keep any, I declare! When I get to be constable I'll straighten some things in Marsden township that's terrible crooked now; an' the very first one I'd complain of or arrest would be that ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... by farther age, be once allured from innocency, delighted in vain sights, filled with foul talk, crooked with wilfulness, hardened with stubbornness, and let loose to disobedience; surely it is hard with gentleness, but impossible with severe cruelty, to call them back to good frame again. For where the one perchance may bend it, the other shall surely break it: and so, instead of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... "crooked foot"—the use of which had been forgotten for hundreds of years in every other country in Europe, was almost the only tool employed in tillage in those parts of the Highlands which were separated by almost impassable mountains from the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... uncertainty,—which is most likely to influence the other," said Nancy, switching dexterously away from hinted personal application, and then with a dash of daring gaiety, adding, "When you marry a girl with a crooked nose, will yours begin to crook likewise, or will hers take on your ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... us to bring him? Bacon? Got any bacon? Too bad—oh, don't apologize; it's all right. Cold chisels—that's the thing if you ain't got no bacon. Let me see a three-pound cold chisel about as big as that,"—extending a huge and crooked forefinger,—"an' with a big bulge at one end. Straight in the middle, circling off into a three-cornered wavy edge on the other side. What? Look here! You can't tell us nothing about saloons that we don't know. I ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... Madoc, she took her place in the coach in which she had journeyed a year before; and reaching the station at Blaennos, soon arrived at Fordsea. Leaving her luggage at the station, she made her way into the well-remembered town. There was the white-flashing harbour, here was the crooked Reuben Street, and here the dear little house once occupied by her uncle, where she and Cardo had spent their happy honeymoon. Yes, she remembered it all; but she held her head up bravely, and crushed down every tender memory, hardening her heart, and setting herself to attend ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... unless The Man's legs are absolutely straight. Why this is, I don't know. All my friends have straight legs—and yet I never hear them make it a subject of comment or boasting. I don't believe I have, at present, a single friend with crooked legs. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... apparent: he does himself only justice when he implies that there is no greater dissimilarity than between himself and Hercules. He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation, he has a natural inclination for crooked ways; he is a hypocrite towards himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination: thoughts, as he says on a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... the days of the Crusades. Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones was a trellis of rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them clambered and intertwined at will a mass of clustering creepers. On each side of the latticed gate stretched the crooked arms of two stunted apple-trees. Three parallel walks, gravelled and separated from each other by square beds, where the earth was held in by box-borders, made the garden, which terminated, beneath a terrace of the old walls, in a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... scene kaleidoscopic; a modern grain thresher will take the place of weary animals plodding in a circle, treading out the grain; half-clad women at the fountains will disappear, and iron pipes will convey water for domestic use to the place of consumption. The awkward branch of crooked wood now used to turn the soil will be replaced by the modern plough, and reaping machines will relieve the weary backs of men, women, and children, who slowly grub beneath a burning sun through the broad grain ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... Brandon on the other, and, in between, a beautiful expanse of water, wide enough for a river and possibly deep enough for a heavy dew. We scurried for chart and sounding-pole. Following the narrow, crooked channel indicated on the chart, we worked our way well into the mouth of the stream and cast anchor near a point of woods. From the chart we could tell that somewhere beyond that forest wall, over near the bank of the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... Blanche, "your mouth may be large, but it is a nice shape, and your lips are beautifully red, and your nose is really only a very tiny bit crooked; and so, Miss Marjory," triumphantly, "there's no reason at all why you should be allowed to use boys' ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... round his cap, up and down the crooked line of his audience. The two sober boys at one end dropped in a number of pennies, one at a ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... among the miscellany of the Crystal Palace Hotel had failed to reveal a single razor. The razor used by the miner should in all reason have been found, but there was neither that nor any other. The baffled seeker believed there must have been crooked work somewhere. Without hesitation he found either Jimmie or his companion to be guilty of malfeasance in office. But at least one item of more or less worried debate was eliminated. He need no longer weigh mere surface gentility against the stern demands of an active ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and in foreign languages, etc. Thus assured of making her own living, she could afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who, she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting. She said to herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before them; and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere of useful activity full ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... tamanoir strikes a hole in the wall of clay with his powerful, crooked claws. The warrior-ants then issue out by thousands to resent the insult, while the labourers retire to the inmost recesses. The soldiers swarm on every part of their assailant, but their sharp mandibles are unable to pierce its thick skin. The bear then putting forth ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... No watery or pus-like discharge escapes at any period of this disease. These spots extend at the circumference (periphery), reaching the size of the drops, or of the coins, or they may run together and form ring-shaped, or crooked wavy lines of patches, with a center that is healing up. A few scattered spots may be present, or large areas may be involved. In rare cases the whole skin is affected. These spots or patches may occur an any part of the body, but involve the extending part of the limbs, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... with his sword, he was a clear, trenchant, vigorous writer, and could talk on paper as fluently and as cogently about ironclads and torpedoes as about the wrongs of the natives of Lazistan, the necessity of upholding the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and of circumventing the dark and crooked wiles of Russian diplomacy. Altogether Augustus Charles Hobart was a remarkable man—bluff, bold, dashing, and somewhat dogged. There was in his composition something of the mediaeval "condottiere," and a good deal more of that Dugald Dalgetty whom Scott drew. Gustavus Adolphus ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... kinsman, but found him so weak from Monsieur Ambrose Pare's drastic surgery that he was compelled to postpone his business. "Get you back to Eaucourt," said Coligny, "and cultivate your garden till I send for you. France is too crooked just now for a forthright fellow like you to do her service, and I do not think that the air of Paris is healthy for our house." Gaspard was fain to obey, judging that the Admiral spoke of some delicate state business for ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... drew near, and very striking was their appearance—the variously coloured mules, following the bell-mare which went in advance as a leader, winding slowly down the crooked path, and the peons in their picturesque costumes shouting, laughing, or singing wild snatches of song as they were moved by fury, fun, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... the said Crucibles, through which there runs a continual Rivolet of cold water, conveyed thither by Pipes for the cooling of the dissolved Sulphur, which is ordinarily four hours in melting. This done, the Ashes are drawn out by a crooked Iron, and being put into an Iron Wheel barrow, are carried out of the Hutt, and {46} being laid in a heap, are covered with other exiled or drained Ashes, the better to keep them warm; which is reiterated, as long ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... and more clearly defined itself. The man was upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet, with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... muscle had no action on them. The second case was that of an idiot of forty-four of a more degraded type than the previous one. The cranium was round and bullet-shaped and the hair generally thick. The scalp was not so lax as in the other case, but the furrows were more crooked. By tickling the scalp over the back of the neck the two median furrows ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... a boy called Francis, who lived in a curious old town in the mountains of Italy. The town was called Assisi. It was all funny little up-and-down streets and flights of long, crooked stone steps; and there was a wall all round (to keep enemies out), and big gates in the wall that were closed at night. The purple hills and mountains spread away as far as you could see beneath a blue, blue sky, and all round the city there were vineyards, and lovely ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay

... ivrything was wide open; f'r th' priest had gone home, an' we wanted f'r to break th' record. This Burke was f'r lavin' whin he see where he was; but we run him again th' shootin' gallery, where ye got twinty-five cints, a quarther iv a dollar, f'r ivry time ye rang th' bell. Th' ol' gun we had was crooked as a ram's horn, but it must 've fitted into Burke's squint; f'r he made that there bell ring as if he was a conducthor iv a grip-car roundin' a curve. He had th' shootin' gallery on its last legs whin we run him again th' wheel iv fortune. He broke ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... greatest facility, and playing the most opposite parts in order to arrive at the different ends he proposed to himself; and nevertheless was but little capable of seducing. His judgment acted by fits and starts, was involuntarily crooked, with little sense or clearness; he was disagreeable in spite of himself. Nevertheless, he could be funnily vivacious when he wished, but nothing more, could tell a good story, spoiled, however, to some extent by his stuttering, which his falsehood had turned into a habit from the hesitation ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of the surroundings. On his writing-table she saw the paper-weight with the bronze dog on the top which she remembered; the tidy way in which his different portfolios and writing utensils were placed on the table was also familiar, and so was the large, crooked ivory paper knife which marked the place in a French book by Tard, which lay with other volumes on punishment and a book in English by Henry George. She sat down at the table and wrote a note asking him to be sure to come that same ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... countless. And Sinhika gave birth to Rahu, the persecutor of the Sun and the Moon, and to three others, Suchandra, Chandrahantri, and Chandrapramardana. And the countless progeny of Krura (krodha) were as crooked and wicked as herself. And the tribe was wrathful, of crooked deeds, and persecutors of their foes. And Danayu also had four sons who were bulls among the Asuras. They were Vikshara, Vala, Vira, and Vritra the great Asura. And the sons of Kala were all like Yama ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... crooked. He's too anxious to find out how many guns we have and too anxious to go back ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... at least, the animal seemed to perform an automatic action, and it seemed to me that we had guessed subconsciously what the horse intended to do. This may appear a crooked hypothesis, but it is less difficult for me than to think that the horse had read in my mind the number which I had there. It certainly did nothing on most occasions to upset the fairly clear and precise impression that it was obeying some more or ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beat with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... A "crooked" policeman may build up a "system," but the honest policemen will hunt him down, even letting the lesser criminal escape to catch the greater—"The System," by Taylor Granville, Junie MacCree and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... mystic bird replied. "Brother, he saith, 'But it is nought: the work is overhard.' Whose fault is that? God sets not overwork. He saith the world is sorrowful, and he Is therefore sorrowful. He cannot set The crooked straight;—but who demands of him, O brother, that he should? What! thinks he, then, His work is God's advantage, and his will More bent to aid the world than its dread Lord's? Nay, yet there live amongst us legions fair, Millions on millions, who could do right well ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... church, for help against all its temptations; that God would let nothing be too hard for it; and that all things might work together for its good, that God would keep them blameless and harmless, the sons of God, to his glory, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. And this is the substance of Christ's own prayer in John 17. And all Paul's prayers did run that way, as one of his prayers doth eminently show. "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, and in all judgment; that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... women sit, with trays formed of the broad banana leaves, on which the beans are placed as they extract them from the pod with wooden spoons. The result of the day's work, placed in panniers on donkey-back, is "crooked" down to the cocoa-house, and that night remains in box-like bins, with perforated sides and bottom, covered in with banana leaves. Every twenty-four hours these bins are emptied into others, so that the contents are thoroughly mixed, ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... running water, and of a flowering tree. And all the while we held him fast. When at last he was weary, he said, 'Which of the gods, son of Atreus [Footnote: A'-treus.], bade thee thus waylay me?' But I answered him: 'Wherefore dost thou beguile me, old man, with crooked words? I am held fast in this isle, and can find no escape therefrom. Tell me now which of the gods hindereth me, and how I may return across the sea?' The old man made reply: 'Thou shouldst have done sacrifice to Zeus and the other ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... more compliant with the new order of things than himself—there were not to be found in this crisis several influential persons who had more sympathy with their late chief and with the selfish and crooked policy of the Hamiltons than with the straightforward course and steadfast fidelity of the dauntless reformer, and who would have little relish for his earnest warnings and stern reproofs. The notices preserved ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... silently destroyed them. His terrible celebrity only began in 1777, caused by the double murder of Madame de Lamotte and her son, and his name, unlike those of some other great criminals, does not at first recall a long series of crimes, but when one examines this low, crooked, and obscure life, one finds a fresh stain at every step, and perhaps no one has ever surpassed him in dissimulation, in profound hypocrisy, in indefatigable depravity. Derues was executed at thirty-two, and his whole life was steeped in vice; though happily so ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... {94f} Crank, lively. A boat was "crank" when frail, lightly and easily tossed on the waves, and liable to upset. Prof. Skeat thinks that the image of the tossed boat suggested lively movement. {151c} Creeshie flannen, greasy flannel. {151e} Cummock, a short staff with a crooked head. {151f} Cutty, short; so ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... by the weddynge fynger only crooked: and this you may marke in these a certayne order. But now 7, 8, and 9, are expressed w{i}t{h} the bowynge of the same fyngers as are 1, 2, and 3, ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous

... saw anybody so bigoted and pig-headed as you are," the girl spoke out angrily. "Any one with eyes in his head could see that Jim is as straight as a string. He couldn't be crooked if he tried. Long as you've known him I should think you wouldn't need to ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... said Mashune, excitedly, as we drew near the thorn; 'the buffalo has charged him. Look, here he stood to fire at him; see how firmly he planted his feet upon the earth; there is the mark of his crooked toe (Hans had one bent toe). Look! here the bull came like a boulder down the hill, his hoofs turning up the earth like a hoe. Hans had hit him: he bled as he came; there are the blood spots. It is all written down there, my father—there upon ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard

... dismayed. Their number being small, the Church folk were pressed one upon the other; and after they were thrown in a mass against the gate of the Chariot House the Dissenters spread themselves easily as far as the door of the Crooked Stairway. ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... huge four-post bed, shrouded in stifling hangings, the heir-apparent of the greatest empire in the then world, Don Carlos, only son of Philip II. and heir-apparent of Spain, the Netherlands, and all the Indies. A short sickly boy of sixteen, with a bull head, a crooked shoulder, a short leg, and a brutal temper, he will not be missed by the world if he should die. His profligate career seems to have brought its own punishment. To the scandal of his father, who tolerated no one's ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justly increases their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a very white and flexible wood. Of this wood the natives make their crooked spades for hoeing their fields. The nut is smaller than ours, and the shell more tender; but the fruit is so bitter that none but perroquets ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... wicked spirits, men and devils all combin'd, Yet my Mother's love will save me if in faithfulness I stand: No infernal crooked creature can destroy or harm my soul, If I keep the love of Mother and obey her ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... own castle at Pomfret, had come to be a great favourite with the Londoners, in whose eyes he appeared as the champion of the oppressed against the strong. His memory was long cherished in the city, and miracles were believed to have taken place—the crooked made straight, the blind receiving sight and the deaf hearing—before the tablet he had set up in St. Paul's commemorative of the king's submission to the Ordinances. Edward ordered the removal of the tablet, but it was again set up as soon as ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... I shall be a splendid governor by the time you have finished me off; and you will always be there to put me straight when I am going crooked; and I say, don't go and spoil a jolly day by a fuss over such a little matter as a bunch ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... little hillock in the fields twisted his crooked branches with laughter. The wild rose, whose hips were already beginning to turn red, nodded ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... daughters who as yet were only children. These little ogresses all had the most lovely complexions, for, like their father, they ate fresh meat. But they had little round grey eyes, crooked noses, and very large mouths, with long and exceedingly sharp teeth, set far apart. They were not so very wicked at present, but they showed great promise, for already they were in the habit of killing little ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... all, and to my words give heed. Since naught avails this discord to allay, And peace is hopeless, let the war proceed. Trojans, Rutulians—each alike this day Must carve his hopes and fortune as he may. Fate, blindness, crooked counsels—whatso'er Holds Troy in leaguer, equally I weigh The chance of all, nor would Rutulians spare. For each must toil and try, till ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... the troublesome obligation she had assumed, was now the problem; since to fulfil her promise honestly was, for a person of her crooked policy and inordinate ambition, not to be thought of for an instant. The readiest solution was found in abolishing the office of lieutenant-general. This could be done only by declaring the termination of the minority of Charles. For this an opportunity presented ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... rustlers, and who, while always carefree and easy-going (even fighting with great good humor and carelessness), had established the reputation of being the most reckless gang of daredevil gun-fighters that ever pounded leather. Crooked gaming houses, from El Paso to Cheyenne and from Phoenix to Leavenworth, unanimously and enthusiastically damned them from their boots to their sombreros, and the sheriffs and marshals of many localities had received from their hands most timely assistance—and some trouble. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... feet are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts

... king. "Thou art wise, though thy limbs are crooked and curt; and the stars might have chosen a taller man." Then the king laughed again; and Morven laughed too, but there was danger in the mirth of the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... schoolmaster, Meinherr Friedrich, comes to-morrow,' said Otto. 'I am so glad. I was weary of that old Master Hoffman, with his crooked problems ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... examine, upon which we are all, nevertheless, expressing every day stubborn opinions. We all have to acquire some measure of the philosophic mind, and be content to retain a large army of thoughts, equipped each thought with its crooked bayonet, a note of interrogation. In reasoning, also, when we do reason, we have to remember fairly that "not proven" does not always mean untrue. And in accepting matters of testimony, we must rigidly preserve in view the fact, that, except upon gross subjects ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... about and never stops, And as he can he fareth. The crooked leaps, the clumsy hops, Nor ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... did reach Stamboul in the end, on a rainy morning, and marched wondering through its crooked streets, scarcely noticed by the inhabitants. Men seemed afraid to look long at us, but glanced once swiftly and passed on. German officers were everywhere, many of them driven in motor-cars at great speed through ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... fellow, dry and bronzed, with a crooked nose, a long rat-tail moustache, two great yellow piercing and mocking eyes, under a large felt hat set off by a scarlet cock's feather. He was dressed in a green jacket with a leather belt and red breeches, and on his feet were sandals fastened by thongs passed ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... passed through the woods they came to a great rocky place between two mountains. The path was narrow and crooked, and steep cliffs towered ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... the hillside and stopped at the edge of the wood to see the young pheasants, and then went on again, swinging a crooked walking-stick and singing in a voice clear and sweet, but somewhat out of tune, snatches of songs which she had picked up from Peter, humming the ridiculous words in a sort of unconscious happiness. She walked with a raking grace which became her as wings ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... character, which he inherited from both father and mother, manifested itself in many ways. He had a lamb, whose horns were crooked, and had a tendency to turn in. His father had given it to him for his own, on condition that he should keep the horns carefully filed, so that they should not hurt the animal. He had a small file on purpose, and ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... he was constantly extolling the charms of Lady Wortley Montagu in every strain of excessive adulation. He wrote sonnets upon her, and told her she had robbed the whole tree of knowledge. But when the ungrateful fair rejected her little crooked admirer, he completely changed his tone, and descended to lampoon ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and presently there came a time when the out-of-doors was all so still that even the falling of a shadow would have made ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... necessary to have straight and even rafters, because the humps, bumps, and hollows caused by crooked sticks are concealed by the mattress of straw. Take a bundle of thatch in your hands, squeeze it together, and place it so that the butt ends project about three inches beyond the floor (A, Fig. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... "Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself after bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable to bear the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased face, went off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked her, if she still had a minute to spare, to help ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... wife,—the pillar of salt, mentioned and portrayed by the American expedition in 1848, and of which it is said they took a fragment for a museum at home,—after a good deal of search, we only discovered a crooked thin spire of rock-salt in one place of the mountain; but it would not have been very remarkable if many such had been found to exist in ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... you, Monshur Tonson! Parleh vouh English? Prenez un seat, et un glass de Madeira. Nous parlerons hansamble le Franseh. Neger, a bottle of Madeira; and let it be good, or you'll get the bottle across your crooked shins. A bottle of Irish for me, d'ye hear, real Irish whisky, or if you haven't any, Scotch will do. No, boys, I tell you I am a gone man. Dismissed, sent away, packed off with a flea in my ear, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... scribbled something; Meg passed him on to Leila. "May I have the pleasure?" He ducked and smiled. There came a dark man wearing an eyeglass, then cousin Laurie with a friend, and Laura with a little freckled fellow whose tie was crooked. Then quite an old man—fat, with a big bald patch on his head—took her programme and murmured, "Let me see, let me see!" And he was a long time comparing his programme, which looked black with ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... way, and all Saharan countries where many languages are spoken, a great deal is done by signs. The sign of the crooked forefinger represents the crouching of man and beast under sickness; but no sign is more common than which represents the large Spanish dollar, namely, forming a circle with the thumb and forefinger, and ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... grounds for their claim, but do they really manifest the qualifications mentioned by Burke? Are they indeed so "highly civilized" as to be in all respects worthy paragons to the so-called semi-civilized nations? Have not some of their policies been such as can be characterized only as crooked and selfish actions which less civilized peoples would not have thought of? I believe that every disinterested reader will be able to supply confirmatory illustrations for himself, but I will enforce the point by giving a few Chinese ideals of ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang



Words linked to "Crooked" :   indirect, tortuous, gnarly, form, writhed, round-shouldered, stooped, crooked-stemmed aster, knobbed, contour, hooked, windblown, shape, zigzag, geniculate, knotty, refractive, honesty, unerect, anfractuous, conformation, voluminous, cockeyed, irregular, wry, configuration, askew, aquiline, coiled, round-backed, writhen, twisty, reflexed, akimbo, wonky, squiggly, knotted, hunched, awry, corrupt, underhanded, contorted, straight, zig-zag, warped, asymmetrical, sneaky, stooping, honestness, gnarled, dishonest, unlawful, underhand, deflective



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com