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Feminine   Listen
noun
Feminine  n.  
1.
A woman. (Obs. or Colloq.) "They guide the feminines toward the palace."
2.
(Gram.) Any one of those words which are the appellations of females, or which have the terminations usually found in such words; as, actress, songstress, abbess, executrix. "There are but few true feminines in English."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books



... and, stretch'd upon the short turf there, I was telling my usual tale. Joan lay beside me, her chin propp'd on one earth-stain'd hand, her great solemn eyes wide open as she listened. Till that moment I had regarded her rather as a man comrade than a girl, but now some feminine trick of gesture awoke me perhaps, for my fancy began to contrast her with Delia, and I broke off my ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... many times, but always at the store. He was pleasant and jolly and she liked him well enough, although she had refused his invitations to go on sailing parties and the like. She knew perfectly well that his mother and sister would not have approved of these invitations, for in the feminine Keith mind there was a great gulf fixed between the summer resident and the native. The latter was to be helped and improved but not encouraged socially beyond a certain point. Mary sought neither help nor improvement ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... charity of wealthy penitents, prepared to take possession of their empire beyond sea. Contributions were asked, and not in vain; for the sagacious fathers, mindful of every spring of influence, had deeply studied the mazes of feminine psychology, and then, as now, were favorite confessors of the fair. It was on the twelfth of March, 1613, that the "Mayflower" of the Jesuits sailed from Honfleur for the shores of New England. She was the "Jonas," formerly in the service of De ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... literally. The Burdwan translator makes nonsense of it. Both however, wrongly take agadha as the final word in yathagadha, forgetting that agadham is a masculine adjective incapable of qualifying nadim which is feminine. Ayam is Jiva. The last clause is to be taken as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... the forests, his only chance of escape. For a moment he was tempted by despair to give up; but recalling the quiet, sad face of the heroic girl, he felt profoundly ashamed of his weakness. She had selected him for the gift of liberty and he must show himself worthy of the favour conferred by her feminine, indomitable soul. It appeared to be a sacred trust. To fail would have been a sort of treason against the sacredness of self-sacrifice and ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... feminine psychology—it must have been theoretical, for he was not seventeen—implied a study and depth of research that was quite surprising; but I am bound to state that his estimate of the strength of character ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... consider that an occasional change in the number of feet, or order of rhyme, is any violation of the metrical plan. The single slight liberty I have taken with the lyrical passages is in Margaret's song,—"The King of Thule,"—in which, by omitting the alternate feminine rhymes, yet retaining the metre, I was enabled to make the translation strictly literal. If, in two or three instances, I have left a line unrhymed, I have balanced the omission by giving rhymes to other lines which stand unrhymed in the original text. For the same reason, I ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... incident revives an aspect of Krishna's early character which up to the present has been somewhat obscured by other events. Besides slaying demons he has all along been sensitive to feminine needs, arousing in women passionate adoration and at the same time fulfilling the most intense of their physical desires. It is these qualities which characterize ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... several glasses in silence and thoughtfulness. At last the merchant's expressive face flushed, his eye moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative and feminine sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. "Ah," he cried, pushing his glass from him, "Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good; but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata of hard considerations, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... wonderful...." She had come on deck in her man's clothing.... She was so tall, so slim, her legs so long, it seemed some pleasant feminine fancy of hers, not a material adaptation of the life on board ship. "The wind will hold until we ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... examined it more closely, and quickly discovered something white between the leaves of tobacco. Delicately, with the aid of a pin, he withdrew a roll of very thin paper, scarcely larger than a toothpick. It was a letter. He unrolled it, and found these words, written in a feminine handwriting: ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... without guardians, whilst in their male disguise not a shadow of suspicion or impropriety would interfere with them; the novelty of their condition, assuming each day some new attractions; the curiosity innate in the feminine breast to hear and see things outside her own circle; above all the hallucinations flung on the path of disguise by the fiend of evil, who thus intrigued for the final ruin of his unsuspecting victims, made them agree mutually to ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of 'proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature—masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;' nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the Knight through ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... ladies at home?" asked a smooth, silvery, feminine voice, with a peculiarly neat, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... mixture of frontier crudeness and a certain adumbration—so to call it—of patrician sensibilities and aspirations, affected him both pleasantly and unpleasantly. He did not sympathize promptly with her semi-barbaric costume; she seemed not gently feminine, as compared with the girls of Virginia and Maryland. He resented her muscular development and her independent disposition. She was far from coarseness, however, and, indeed, a trace of subtle refinement, although not conventional, imbued ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... who must have the best of everything, whose teaching to his offspring takes the form of an unconscious and solemn warning. He did not ask the best; he hardly noticed what was offered to him; and it was not owing to his demand, but to that feminine spirit of self-sacrifice which has ruined so many men, that he fared better than ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... call a beauty. Her features were not altogether regular enough for that, and very regular features are rather of the dutch-doll type of beauty. But her open brow looked honesty itself, while a slightly aquiline nose betokened force of character of the true feminine type. The eyes, however, formed the great attraction in her face. You were struck by them at once. True blue eyes, not washed out, not milk and water, but grey-blue eyes, like "the body of heaven in its clearness:" yet with a glint in them, as ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown

... the cushion on his right and the doctor to his left. Eighteen other guests now reclined upon their cushions to left and right, so that we were all arranged in a direct line, facing the lower terrace whence came the feminine buzz. Directly opposite each of us was an empty cushion, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... breadth, variety, seriousness, and energy, with which she set herself her tasks and executed them. She says in one of her letters, 'there is something more piteous almost than soapless poverty in the application of feminine incapacity to literature' (ii. 16). Nobody has ever taken the responsibilities of literature more ardently in earnest. She was accustomed to read aloud to Mr. Lewes three hours a day, and her private reading, except when ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... union with that remarkable woman, pays her a high tribute in The Study of Sociology. After explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there results in extremely remarkable ability ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... the coil of her hair is a stiletto—she can find it in an instant—and as she looks at you out of those impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder, curiosity, modesty or passion. All that we call the eternally feminine is obliterated. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... could possibly do. But you're not feeling very bobbish now." A woman respects the word a man uses, not because she would have chosen it, but because she thinks that he has an exact intention in it, which could not be reconveyed in a more feminine phrase. In this way slang arises. "Is n't it time for Mr. Maynard to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was sketching in the drawing-room. She was tracing, on canvas, profiles of bearded Etruscans for a cushion which Madame Marmet was to embroider. Prince Albertinelli was selecting the wool with an almost feminine knowledge of shades. It was late when Choulette, having, as was his habit, played briscola with the cook at the caterer's, appeared, as joyful as if he possessed the mind of a god. He took a seat on a sofa, beside Madame Martin, and looked at ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... beloved sister of Lady Rachel Russel; the beautiful Miss Hamilton; the peerless Lady Ossory; the matchless Jennings;—women passing through the ordeal of the Whitehall court, at such a time, with unstained repute, may be well believed to have possessed innate virtue and true feminine dignity. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... indicating beforehand, either by inflexion of the personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb, or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender, simple or in complex number. It is on account of this general analogy of structure,—it is because American languages which have no words in common (for instance, the Mexican and the Quichua), resemble each other by their organization, and form complete contrasts to the languages of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... and arm which Venus herself might envy; the jetty curls which shaded her face fell in graceful profusion, Madonna-like, upon shoulders faultless in shape, and white as that crest of foam on yonder sea. Her face was the Spanish oval, with a low, broad feminine forehead, eyebrows exquisitely penciled, and arching over eyes that I shall not attempt to describe. Her lovely bosom, half exposed as she leaned over, reminded me, as it heaved against the chemiset, of the bows of a beautiful ship, rising and sinking with the swell of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... measures, and he was about to continue his journey when the romantic enthusiasm of two young barons Zerboni gave him an entree into aristocratic society, and he tarried. Ere long he had decided to stay for life. In Christine Enghaus, the leading lady at the Hofburgtheater, he found the feminine counterpart to his masculine nature; and on the twenty-sixth of May, 1846, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... apparently was a very fever of composition. But again we must remember that both of these plays had been devised before the author began to write them; and when he took his pen in hand he had already been working on them in scenario for probably a year. To write ten acts in Alexandrines, with feminine rhymes alternating with masculine, was still, to be sure, an appalling task; but Hugo was a facile and prolific poet, and could write very quickly after he had determined exactly what it ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... an ecstasy! It seemed to her more than small-pox or measles, worse even than brain fever. And with whom was she in love? God grant that it were Ivan Ivanovich. If Vera were married to him, she herself would die in peace. But her feminine instinct told her that whatever deep affection the Forester cherished for Vera, it was reciprocated by ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... "There is feminine logic for you!" laughed the young man. "With one breath you tell me to follow the dictates of my own conscience, and then you show me plainly just how much you will despise me if I go against your ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... their bloody tunics, rain-soaked, pain-silent, splashed with the corruption of fighting—their bodies so obviously smashed and their spirits so obviously unbroken. The nurses at the Casualty Clearing Station can scarcely help but understand. They can afford to be feminine to men who are so weak. Moreover, they are near enough the Front to share in the sublime exaltation of those who march out to die. They know when a big offensive is expected, and prepare for it. They are warned the moment it has commenced by the distant thunder of the ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... head, And contrives the topmost place of the rascaldom to hold? And Cleisthenes, they say, Is among the tombs all day, Bewailing for his lover with a lamentable whine. And Callias, I'm told, Has become a sailor bold, And casts a lion's hide o'er his members feminine. ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... with kindly gesture to her. The child was crying softly, for she was half-frightened at the strangeness of the place, and also she was tired after her long walk up and down the rough road. The woman, with subtle feminine comprehension, soon realised this, and also understood that the girl, reared in slavery, felt awed in the presence of so great a lord. So, putting a kindly arm round the slender form of the child, she led her ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... he had got clear of Aleck and had reached up his hand to find the cheek, it was gone, and the arms, too. Susan Stoddard somehow got mixed up in the general Te Deum in the hall, and for the first time, now that the fight was over, allowed her feminine feelings—that is, a few tears—to come ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... wielded the double-bladed paddle in a way a Red Indian might have envied. Once she uttered a little feminine shriek as a cannon ball plunged into the water behind them; but as they got further away from the buoy those on the iron-clads appeared to notice that a boat was within ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... Natas, and he has desired me to bid you welcome in his name, and I hope you will let me do so in my own as well. We are all dying to see this wonderful invention of yours. I suppose you are going to satisfy our feminine ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... gave no sign. But as she murmured something in reply she looked with all a woman's keenness into the face before her. Flo Hutter had a fair skin generously freckled; a mouth and chin too firmly cut to suggest a softer feminine beauty; and eyes of clear light hazel, penetrating, frank, fearless. Her hair was very abundant, almost silver-gold in color, and it was either rebellious or showed lack of care. Carley liked the girl's looks and liked the sincerity of her ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... some three thousand words, the greater part of which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East. It has two genders, masculine and feminine; o represents the masculine and i the feminine: for example, boro rye, a great gentleman; bori rani, a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: gajo or gorgio, a man or gentile; o gajo, the man. The noun ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... beautiful gate which the old court ironsmith Oegg hammered out in lovely forms of leaves and flowers, and shaped laterally upward, as lightly as if with a waft of his hand, in gracious Louis Quinze curves; and they looked back at it in the kind of despair which any perfection inspires. They said how feminine it was, how exotic, how expressive of a luxurious ideal of life which art had purified and left eternally charming. They remembered their Ruskinian youth, and the confidence with which they would once have condemned it; and they had a sense of recreance in now ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of before)—must be Wright's; nothing left about it; intoxicating portion of a bird, getting drunk with pheasant's eye. What gender's wine? Why hen's feminine. Safe three rounds; and some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... separated by a caesura into two distinct halves. The first half of each line contains four accents, the fourth falling upon the last syllable. This last stress, however, is not, as a rule as strong as the others, the effect being somewhat like that of a feminine ending. On this account some speak of three accents in the first half line, with a feminine ending. The fourth stress is, however, too strong to be thus disregarded, but because of its lighter character is best marked with a grave accent. The second half ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... his intimate and confidential friend, had two terriers of the pepper-and-mustard breed, or rather, as we prefer him to any other character Sir Walter Scott has delighted us with, the Dandy Dinmont breed. These dogs (for we avoid the feminine appellation when we can) were strongly attached to their excellent master, and he to them. They were mother and daughter, and each produced a litter of puppies about the same time. Mr. Morritt was seriously ill at this period, and confined to his bed. Fond as these dogs were ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... who, when he received messages and petitions, wreathed himself from head to foot with poison snakes. The son of this ferocious being inherited none of his war-like tendencies; indeed, the lad was almost feminine in appearance, and on succeeding to power he applied himself to the cultivation of peaceful arts. Later historians have uttered a suspicion that he was a natural son of Count Frontenac, but that does ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... into a whelming sea of dangers, and you will be drowned if you are not a good swimmer. Rose did not consider Philip the best swimmer in the world—it is difficult to say why. He denied having danced, but when she asked him, he could not deny having talked with some feminine masks. He related the whole story to her, yet would constantly add: "The ladies were of high rank, and they took me for another." Rose doubted him a little, but she suppressed her resentment until he said they took him for Prince Julian. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... doing what God, by His great gifts of eloquence and song, appointed them to do. And whatever generous and noble duty, either in a private or a public sphere, God gives any woman the will and the power to do, that, and that only, for her, is feminine. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and Annobom (January 1, 1471); and, on their return homewards, found a trade in gold-dust at the village of Sama (Chamah) and on the site which we miscall 'Elmina.' [Footnote: This form of the word, a masculine article with a feminine noun, cannot exist in any of the neo-Latin languages. In Italian and Spanish it would be La Mina, in Portuguese A Mina. The native name is Dina or Edina.] During the same year Fernan' Gomez, a worthy of Lisbon, bought a five years' monopoly of the gold-trade from ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... little woman, seizing another feminine wrist, "is Miss Cherry Langton—Cherry Ripe we call her at home this summer, the dearest girl that ever lived except myself, and one you'll simply delight in—as you do in me—when you get to know ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... disappointment, a small delinquency in some feminine character did now and then happen, and a little sly satire would force its way, quietly too, out of the sides of your mouth, how happily would you instantly disown it, fling it from you as a thing not yours, then catch at it, and sport with it as if you could afford to sport with it, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... where it is rendered 'filthiness' in the sense of exposure, like the 'having thy Boseth naked' of Micah." (J. B. Hannay, "Christianity, the Sources of its Teaching and Symbolism.") The ark itself was a feminine symbol, and phallicism would explain why Moses made an ark and put in it a rod and two stones. "The Eduth, the Shechina, the Tsur, and the Yahveh were identical; simply different names for the same thing, the phallus. They occupied the female ark with which they formed the double ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... could see! He must know that God was omnipotent! His appeal to the people was not for himself. He cared not what became of him. But Carmen—and now Ana and the blind babe—and the calm, unimpassioned Dona Maria, the embodiment of all that was greatest in feminine character—and Rosendo, waiting to lay down his life for those he loved! And then, this people, soon, he felt, to be shattered by the shock of war—ah, God above! what could he say that might save them? If they could know, as Carmen did, if they could love and trust ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he loves; and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which a little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but it ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... ceased, and four girls hastened to the pianos placed on either side of the stage, two left-hands struck a series of chords in the bass, the treble notes replied, and, to the gallant measure of a French polka, a stately prelate entered, smiling benediction as he advanced, the soft clapping of feminine palms drowning, for a moment, the slangy ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... river. The question now arose, where the party was to be concealed during the stay of the savages. Dolly, as was perhaps natural for the housewife, wished to remain by her worldly goods, and pretty Margery had a strong feminine leaning to do the same. But neither of the men approved of the plan. It was risking too much in one spot; and a suggestion that the bee-hunter was not long in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... very much struck the other evening, at the dance, with the appearance of the women," continued Mr. Ellsworth. "Not that they are so brilliant in their beauty—one sees beautiful women in every country; but they are so peculiarly feminine, and generally pretty, as a whole. By room-fulls, en masse, they appear to more advantage I think, than any other women; the general effect is very seldom broken by coarseness of face, or unmanageable awkwardness ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... catalogues and classifies the sins against good manners of which the sex is guilty. He presents a philosophical analysis of the recondite forms of feminine discourtesy. It is the ancient sage again pitilessly exposing the Lamia. It is Circe out-Circed. He details the degrees of offence—in young women, in women who are no longer classed as girls, in nearly all women, in women with the fewest ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... detested these functions which entailed his best clothes and his best behavior. He did not like girls, and looked down with scorn upon young men who showed any preference for the sex feminine. He made but two exceptions to this hard-baked rule: his Aunt Jane, and her young friend who lived on the neighboring ranch, Dorothy. Little Jim called her Dorry because it sounded like a boy's name. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... perhaps because he knew it suited him. He had artistic perceptions, and could adapt himself harmoniously to his surroundings, and he knew Hetty's appreciation of the picturesque. His sallow face showed clean cut almost to feminine refinement under the wide hat, and the blue shirt which clung about him displayed his slender symmetry. It was, however, not made of flannel, but apparently of silk, and the embroidered deerskin jacket which showed the squareness of his shoulders, was not only daintily wrought, but had ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... just a second too late to notice the look of suspiciously-eager interest in her face, for Millicent had put on the mask again. She was a clever actress, quick to press into her service smile or sigh, where words might have been injudicious, and with feminine curiosity and love of unearthing a secret, was bent on drawing out the whole story. It did not necessarily follow that she should impart the secret to her husband, she said to herself. Geoffrey was, for the moment, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... was loudest, it was reported he had come to Cork to foster the Fenian movement, and that he was disguised in feminine garb. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... exact spot where he had seen her first. Perhaps it was at that moment he realised most completely and clearly the curious thing which had come to him—to him of all men, hard-hearted, material, an utter stranger in the world of feminine things. With a pleasant sense of self-abandonment he groped about, searching for its meaning. He was a man who liked to understand thoroughly everything he saw and felt, and this new atmosphere in which ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the feminine faction, on the other hand, consult with more direct authorities, and discover that the doors of Belen are in no wise closed to them, and that everything within those doors is quite at their disposition, saving and excepting the sleeping-apartments of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... protestingly, she had drawn on an amazing pair of things made of heavy felt and ending in thick rubber feet, that were huge and unwieldy. Her hands were lost in great scarlet mitts. It is possible that at this time there was little feminine vanity left in her, yet she looked furtively to one side or the other, expecting scoffing glances. She felt sure that she looked like one of the fantastically-clad ragamuffins she had seen in the streets of New York, at ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... the emaciation of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in the serener features of the classic orators. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... had just seen an example of her courage in a deed that had tried even his own nerve, and, withal, she was a bright, happy girl, earnest and true, possessing all the softer graces of his sisters, and that exquisite touch of feminine delicacy and refinement which appeals more to men than any ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... I have been considered strictly masculine," he said. "To appreciate beauty or to try to be just commonly decent is not exclusively feminine. You must remember there are painters, poets, musicians, workers in art along almost any line you could mention, and no one calls them feminine, but there is one good thing if I am. You need no longer fear me. If you ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... response so exultantly and so gladly that it carried her feeling beyond the doors of expression and transformed it into irradiating feminine charm. It sparkled in her eyes, gave a new winsomeness to her smile, a softer grace to her movements, and a ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... can study undisturbed amid violent noises. His voice is manly (in singing deep base). He can whistle. He is not vain, though well formed, and his hands are delicate. His favorite color is green. The demonstrative warmth of his affection for his friends is the chief feminine trait noted in him. He rarely dreams and has never had an erotic dream; this he explains by saying (earlier than Freud) that all dreams not caused by physical conditions are wish-dreams, and as he always satisfies ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... their own benefit, thus being able to order food from outside and avoid the mess brought in barrels at two and seven of each afternoon for those dependent on government rations. Now and then a wife or feminine friend of one of the prisoners appeared at the grating with a basket of food. Several of the inmates were called one by one to the crack of an iron door in the wall to hear the sentence the judge had chosen to impose upon them in the quiet ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... convincing and tranquillizing in Anna's immovable conviction; the prince felt his inability to oppose her, and was ashamed of his feminine fears in the face of her ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... former days. It would have been a sweet group for a skilful painter, those three principal figures beside the altar. Herbert, as we have described him; Emmeline, in her simple garb of white, her slight figure and peculiarly feminine expression of countenance causing her to appear very many years younger than in reality she was; and Arthur, too, his manly features radiant with chastened yet perfect happiness, seemed well fitted to be the protector, the friend of the gentle being who so soon would call him husband, and look to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... ordinary transaction with uneducated ('that is uncivilised') people made him uncomfortable. Mean and hateful people by their suggestions made life hideous. He lacks the courage of the ordinary man. Though under thirty he is abashed by youth. He is sentimental and hungry for feminine sympathy, yet he realises that the woman who may with safety be taken in marriage by a poor man, given to intellectual pursuits, is extremely difficult of discovery. Consequently he lives in solitude; he is tyrannised by moods, dominated ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... necessities of life or the means for moral and intellectual improvement may in excess become cupidity or covetousness, and lead even to the appropriation of what is not our own. Kleptomania is met with in the book-worm or the antiquarian, as well as in the feminine lover of dress or those in poverty and distress. Firmness may become obstinacy; the justifiable love of self may, by abuse, become pride; and a proper and chaste wish for the approbation of others may be turned into the most absurd ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... fascinating. Women yielded gracefully, nay, eagerly, to his sway; and much delicate flattery had their eyes and lips fed him upon. Sylvie piqued him a trifle by her utter unconcern—or was it the fine instinct of coquetry inherent in feminine nature? ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in East Anglia." On another occasion he praises her for more general qualities, when he compares her to the good wife of the Triad, the perfect woman endowed with all the feminine virtues. His wife and "old Hen." (Henrietta) were his "two loved ones," and he subsequently shows in a score of ways how much they had become ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... speech is what I recollect best of him there: "Right reverend Fathers, date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with—which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam (I am King of the Romans, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... said Mona, appreciating this bit of feminine vanity. "And, Mrs. Greene, if you'll accept them, I'd like to make you a present of those furs. I don't need them, for I have several other sets, and ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... and last words are mystic syllables such as often occur in these formulae. Mani padme is generally interpreted to mean the jewel in the lotus,[1056] but Thomas has pointed out that it is more consonant with grammar and usage to regard the syllables as one word and the vocative of a feminine title similar to Padmapani, one of Avalokita's many names. The analogy of similar spells supports this interpretation and it seems probable that the formula was originally an invocation of the Sakti ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... probably the only really dangerous things I never feared," he said. "You seem to be young and human and feminine. Are you?" ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... instances the same nickname being used to represent perhaps a dozen different proper names, so that it is impossible to tell, from the nickname, what the real name is. Among the most annoying of this class are those that not only represent several names each, but are masculine or feminine, as ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... for a few moments. A promenading couple put their heads behind the screen, and withdrew with the sound of feminine giggling. Outside, the piano was being thumped to the tune of a ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... saw in her a sort of miniature and feminine edition of the Luke Raeburn whom she remembered eight-and-twenty years before in their Scottish home. When Rose had gone into the back drawing room to fetch her crewels, she drew Erica toward her, and kissing her again, said in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... of the surf prevented any attempt at conversation, but now and then there was a little scream, ending with a shout of laughter from one or another of the feminine part of the procession, as they were overtaken by the edge of a wave and their shoes filled with the foam, their skirts wetted by it. Not a very serious matter, as all had learned ere this, as salt water does not ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... fascinating about 'Miss Billy,' some inexplicable feminine characteristic that seems to demand the individual attention of the reader from the moment we open the book until we reluctantly ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Dexie works at when she sits up with me at night. Where is it, Dexie? Bring it out and let us all have a look at it," said Mr. Sherwood, who had listened in silence to the discussion, and did not wish Traverse to think that Dexie was ignorant of this particularly feminine employment. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them. It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... were in her; he knew then that he never could have imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete. A woman of Madame de la Chanterie's apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger women. She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them. Such a woman is either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this—by feminine society, for instance. We think it no scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary class, no ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... offspring of a steadfast and upright character, as well as of the divine grace. This languor, this debility of the will, this morbid tenderness have nothing in them in common with charity, with piety, or with divine love. The former are the attributes of a nature less than feminine; the latter are passions, if passions they can be called, of angels rather than of men. God will be my surety, and with his help I will fight for my own salvation. But, should I sink into perdition, not in disguise nor by capitulation shall the enemies of the soul and the sins of the flesh enter ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... gazed at the feminine faces before him. "Go where? What makes Norris so sure he'll find life on any planet in this system? And incidentally where in the cosmos ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi

... from passing the line, none of us can doubt. That its general tendency may be good rather than evil, is possible. But the hardness necessary to preserve the rule, a hardness which must be exclusively feminine but which is seldom wanting, is a marvellous feature in the female character. Lady Mary Quin probably thought but little on the subject. The women in the cottage on the cliff, who were befriended by Father Marty, were to her dangerous scheming Roman Catholic adventurers. The proper triumph of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... one often meets in travelling. This was in the rear car, the others being all crowded. The seats were spacious, and had high backs for night travelling. A gentleman entered the car and proposed to sit in a seat in which was only one child, but he was informed by a feminine voice in the rear that the whole seat was taken— so he advanced to the next seat, which was occupied by another child, a boy about eight years old— again the same voice, confirmed by one of the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... silent. He was a beautiful youth, with a face almost feminine, to which anger and sunburn added charm. He wore a close-fitting coat with blue and white stripes, a kerchief of the same color behind his helmet, a gold chain around his neck, and a costly sword beneath ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... her cousin. "Most of it seems to come from the feminine side of the house, though, I fear. All that the boys and I have done has been to abstain ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... have had head and hands full. She was not aware that he found time to see a good deal of another young woman who had no claim of old friendship; but even if she had known, she would have understood and forgiven almost as one man understands and forgives another. For quaintly feminine as she was, Rose often said, and felt, that "before a woman can be a true lady she must be a gentleman." And, being a gentleman, she can learn to be a "good fellow"—an ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... fatiguing feminine occupations, and drawing, or painting, are by no means consistent with an earnest, practical musical education; not only because both those occupations require so much time, but because they deprive the ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... with quiet happiness, at the sight of children and the sound of their voices. This impressibility has even been made the subject of criticism. A foreign writer declares that the soldier's character exhibited a "feminine" softness, unfitting him for the conduct of affairs of moment. What the Confederacy wanted, intimates the writer in question, was a rough dictator, with little regard for nice questions of law—one to lay the rough hand of the born ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... has still many admirers, the English ear is grown remarkably delicate as to the consonance of rhymes; Dryden and Pope have used many, which would not now be received. Masculine and feminine rhymes are unknown in English. As the character of a language appears to be the result of all the affections of the people who speak it, it did not seem foreign to this design to compare the manner in which two such great ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... tiny creature, wholly feminine in appearance, and in spite of her public activities, her really brilliant and initiative mind, was notoriously dependent upon her big burly husband for guidance and advice in all practical matters. When they took a holiday the younger of his children gave him the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... in his noble disregard of consistency. "Do I contradict myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat comes the answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or rather of a woman: "Very well, then, I contradict myself!" with this addition, not so feminine and perhaps not altogether so satisfactory: "I am large - I contain multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even if it be not so ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... how am I going to get it there? That's a little detail which escapes your feminine observation. Please to note the height of our ladder and the height of that wall, and ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... that she was really attached to Lord Dreever. He suspected the hand of McEachern in the affair, though the suspicion did not clear up the mystery by any means. Molly was a girl of character, not a feminine counterpart of his lordship, content meekly to do what she was told in a matter of this kind. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... are three genders, and the grammatical gender of a noun is not necessarily identical with its natural gender. For inanimate objects it is often determined simply by the form of the noun. Sella, seat, of the first declension, is feminine, because almost all nouns ending in -a are feminine; hortus, garden, is masculine, because nouns in -us of its declension are mostly masculine, and so on. From such a system as this two results are reasonably sure to follow. ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... interest upon these strange beings. They were, in color, but little darker than the Moors who had tried to capture the Swan, on her last voyage. They were of good height, but of slender figure. Their countenances were soft and almost feminine, with large dark eyes and mild and gentle expression. They had no hair upon their faces; that on their heads was long and black. Round their heads were light gold bands, from which rose plumes of colored feathers. They were naked above the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land! Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones! The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd! The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the compact! The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian! O all and each well-loved ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor. Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... at its word and lopped it off the tree. A carver in the neighborhood engaged to make the figurehead. He was a tolerably good workman and had already carved several figureheads in what he intended for feminine shapes, and looking pretty much like those which we see nowadays stuck up under a vessel's bowsprit, with great staring eyes that never wink at the dash of the spray. But (what was very strange) the carver ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... Tamworth fancied that unawares she had slipped into fairyland; so great was the contrast between this retreat and the sordid surroundings amidst which it was perched. It was furnished with a dainty, and almost a feminine luxury. The room, she could see, was no more than an oblong garret; but along one side mouse-coloured curtains fell to the ground in folds from the angle where the sloping roof met the wall; on the other a cheerful fire glowed from a hearth ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... act in a still more delicate capacity. Queen Amitsi was the king's chief consort. Whether she had dabbled in some intrigue of the palace, or had been guilty of unfaithfulness in act or in intention, or had been mixed up in one of those feminine dramas which so frequently disturb the peace of harems, we do not know. At any rate, Papi considered it necessary to proceed against her, and appointed Uni to judge the case. Aided only by his secretary, he drew up the indictment and decided the action so discreetly, that to this ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... fuel and deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase and slay the deer, and make from an entire buckskin a pair of moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting, skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and, finally, he must fabricate or obtain for the maiden's use a necklace of seashell or of silver, in order that his capacity for long journeys or successful barter may be established; but if circumstances ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... not come then. The settlement between these two lingual disputants did not come for many days. The reason for a sudden cessation of the wordy conflict was a shrill, feminine voice, which cried out from ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... second half of the last line is that there is very frequently no unaccented syllable between the second and the third accented ones. Among occasional variations of the normal strophe as here described may be mentioned the following: The end-rhyme is in a few instances feminine instead of masculine; while on the other hand the ending of the first half-lines is occasionally masculine instead of feminine, that is, the caesura is not "ringing." In a few scattered instances we find strophes that ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... If I could but give some faint idea of their varying moods, their steely hardness, their feminine softness, their power of command, their penetrating intensity suddenly melting away into an expression of womanly weakness—but I am ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thus, like Jubal's shell, Gave forth "so sweetly and so well," Was one in Morning Post much famed, From a divine collection, named, "Songs of the Toilet"—every Lay Taking for subject of its Muse, Some branch of feminine array, Some item, with full scope, to choose, From diamonds down to dancing shoes; From the last hat that Herbault's hands Bequeathed to an admiring world, Down to the latest flounce that stands Like Jacob's Ladder—or ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... be true, Mrs Lammle is thrown on the feminine resource of saying, 'I don't care what you uttered ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... His feminine attachments usually showed some definite results in his writing. Miss Domecq's influence during the long period of his devotion inspired him to produce much verse, which received such high praise that his father desired ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins—those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... the name is spelled in some of the letters in syllables) may mean "child of Adonis." Compare the Chaldee "Ribah" for "girl," in the feminine. That "Adda" was Adonis seems to be derivable from the name "Adoram" (2 Sam. xx. 20), otherwise Adoniram (1 ...
— Egyptian Literature

... emotions of the warrior with the pious devotion of the recluse. Towards the close of the tenth century, Roswitha, a nun, composed several dramas in Latin, characterized by true Christian feeling and feminine tenderness. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness and humility. This characteristic was remarked, as we have seen, by the Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it. Yet so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of himself had nothing to ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... in the garden,' Jane said in such a curiously uninterested tone of voice that he could not resist glancing round at her; but she was just then engaged in that mysterious process of 'stroking the gathers,' which the intelligent feminine reader will understand requires a certain attention. If this indifference were assumed, Jane Sands was a much better actor and a more deceptive character than he had believed possible; if she were too entirely absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young mistress's baby, she was ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... There was a rustle of papers and he closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped his hands smartly. Almost on the instant the curtain hanging in the doorway at the side of the desk was drawn aside and a small, brown feminine hand materialized. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather strenuous, rather joyless thing for them. And it was in men they found the fun. Yet here was Marcella, who was quite different from anything feminine he had ever seen or imagined, suddenly appealing to him not to let her be fickle. Immediately he felt very manly, very responsible. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... Mrs. Hill rested securely, but nevertheless did not fail to concoct several feminine artifices for the helping on of foreordination. It was a working belief with her that it was always well to have the gods in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... reality in it than could be found in the sentimental maps of the 17th century. In fact, I have no difficulty whatever in calling it the Map of Life! very neatly divided into two parts, the east and the west, the masculine and the feminine. The women on the right, and the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... Blueskin felt a small and trembling hand placed upon his own, and, turning at the summons, beheld a young female, whose features were partially concealed by a loo, or half mask, standing beside him. Coarse as were the ruffian's notions of feminine beauty, he could not be insensible to the surpassing loveliness of the fair creature, who had thus solicited his attention. Her figure was, in some measure, hidden by a large scarf, and a deep hood drawn over the head contributed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... an amply-framed, finely-proportioned person, and rejoiced in her physique, having a masculine pride in her breadth of shoulders and depth of chest. But in all other respects she was exquisitely feminine: she never displayed either strength or agility. Westbrook was a country place, and in the young folks' rambles about town and out over the hills she was more often fatigued than anybody else, and obliged to accept support from some one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... each has in himself all the four dramatis personae—Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and the Voice of God. Adam is the will, the power of choice, the masculine element, in man; Eve is the affection, the desire, the feminine element, in man; the Voice of God is the higher reason in the soul, through which infinite truth commands,—i.e., the higher law; and the Serpent, the lower reason in the soul, the cunning element, the sophistical understanding, which can put evil for good, and good for evil. The garden ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... native races is shown by the results, both in biology and culture. The presence or absence of useful minerals, plants and animals rendered some congenial, others unfriendly; some areas were the patrons of virile occupations, others of feminine pursuits. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... more painful because women are so active in trying to better the conditions in trades which men control. Feminine circles everywhere have been convulsed with sympathy for shop and factory girls. Intelligent and persistent efforts are making to reach and aid them. This is, of course, right, and it would be a national calamity if such ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... the quantity she did at home and in the parish would be too amazing to be recorded. Spirited and decided, without superfluous fears and fineries, she had a firm, robust figure, and a rosy, good-natured face, with a manner that, though perfectly feminine, had in it an air of strength ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... neighbourhood as Frank was in that locality. It was a matter of moment to every farmer, and every farmer's wife, which bride Frank should marry of those bespoken for him; Mary, namely, or Money. Every yokel about the place had been made to understand that, by some feminine sleight of hand, the doctor's niece had managed to trap Master Frank, and that Master Frank had been sent out of the way so that he might, if yet possible, break through the trapping. All this made life rather ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... from what may be considered specifically a soubrette character. Complaints are uttered about the difficulty of finding a player to represent the comic mother-in-law; indeed, playwrights are sometimes affected in their work by the fear that if they write broad comedy for feminine parts the difficulty of casting ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his fingers. In a moment she was smiling. The smile was not forced. It was the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was disappointed not to catch in her face ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... startled feminine voice from the doorway. Then Francesca, her eyes filled with fright, hastened across the porch. She would have thrown her arms around the neck of the manacled man had not the stranger caught her by one arm and ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... and a red scarf at her throat matched the band of her soft felt hat. She drew off her gauntlets and felt in her pocket for a handkerchief with which to brush some splashes of mud that had dried on her cheek, and the action was so feminine, and marked so abrupt a transition from the strange business of the night and morning, that Armitage and Dick laughed and Judge ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... expert needle-woman should be an object of ambition to every fair one. Never is beauty and feminine grace so attractive, as when engaged in the honorable discharge of household duties, and domestic cares. The subjects treated of in this little manual are of vast importance, and to them we are indebted for a large amount of the comforts we enjoy; as, without their ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... of his movements, they materially add to his labour and take from his pleasure in the dance. They should endeavour to lean as lightly, and give as little trouble, as possible; for, however flattering to the vanity of the nobler sex may be the idea of feminine dependence, we question whether the reality, in the shape of a dead weight upon their aching arms throughout a Polka or Valse of twenty minutes' duration, would be acceptable to even the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... metier, her occupation, her raison d'etre. And, contrary to what is frequently supposed from a mistaken acquaintance with this Japanese institution, she would not be in the least facile or accessible. Our ideas of feminine Japan are too much based on the circumscribed experiences of holiday travellers, or books of the bad taste of Pierre Loti's "Madame Chrysantheme." We do not judge the women of England by Leicester Square, nor of Paris by those ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... when everything is being so beautifully fixed. Mary-love, I have a real scheme, but it's a secret. Can't I have a secret same as you?" Cleo twisted her head characteristically. "At any rate," she continued, "we haven't any idea of letting out Peterina Panna (that's my feminine for Peter Pan); we haven't any idea of letting her escape. She must stay right here until all this delicious mystery is cleared up. You see, Peterina Panna, we are only beginning to know your fairyland story, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... households; hence, dioecious reproduction is sexual generation by male and female individuals. Each is distinguished by sexual characteristics. The male sexual organs are complete in one individual, and all the female organs belong to a separate feminine organization. In some of the vertebrates, impregnation does not require sexual congress; in other words, fecundation may take place externally. The female fish of some species first deposits her ova, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... for them a line of inactive sovereigns, reputed to be the descendants of Ninus and Semiramis. The last of them, Sardanapalus, had, according to this account, lived a life of self-indulgence in his harem, surrounded by women, dressing himself in their garb, and adopting feminine occupations and amusements. The satrap of Media, Arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in concert with Belesys the Babylonian. The imminence of the danger thus occasioned roused Sardanapalus from his torpor, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at all in the popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her advanced age, the fact that she was the first woman known in English history to have suffered death for no worse an offence than that of having exercised the feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further fact that, even so, this offence—technical as it was—was never fully proved against her, are all circumstances which have left their indelible stamp of horror upon the public mind. There is also the further circumstance that hers was the first ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... an entrancing creature she was! What passion lurked in those black eyes of hers, in her moods, swiftly changing from gusts of fierce imperiousness to gentle airs of feminine charm! What a frail little thing she was to have fought her way alone up the ladder from the lowest rung to the very top! She must have character and grit, Desmond decided, for he was a young man who adored efficiency: to ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... became so bold that I ventured to speak against their inveterate practices, thieving and lying, telling fortunes, and stealing a pastesas; this was touching upon delicate ground, and I experienced much opposition and much feminine clamour. I persevered, however, and they finally assented to all I said, not that I believe that my words made much impression upon their hearts. In a few months matters were so far advanced that they would sing a hymn; ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... mind moved slowly, and while he was meditating a reply, his wife issued various commands, and went through some intricate feminine manoeuvres, with the effect of increased fluffiness on the baby's part. In five minutes she was feeding the child with warm milk from a spoon, and proclaiming that he ate "like ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... imperceptible moment to give him an indignant glance, and then moved on. That feminine penetration—so clever and so tainted by the eternal instinct of self-defence, so ready to see an obvious evil in everything it cannot understand—filled her with bitter resentment against both the men who could offer to the spiritual and tragic strife of her ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... and rode back up the trail. The glances of these ruffians seemed to scorch her with the reality of her appearance. She wore a disguise, but her womanhood was more manifest in it than in her feminine garb. It attracted the bold glances of these men. If there were any possible decency among them, this outrageous bandit costume rendered it null. How could she ever continue to wear it? Would not something good and sacred within her be sullied by a constant exposure ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... volume Miss Fisher has treated a subject of vital interest and importance for all American lovers of literature, and she has accomplished her task with rare feminine appreciation and sympathy, with a clear and decisive interest, with a catholicity of judgment and a fine sense of discrimination and proportion and with a warmth and delicacy of treatment that transform these biographical sketches into ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... be gloomy and resentful. The crowded and factitious gaiety of the place actually annoyed him. If Elsie April had been and gone away again, he objected to such silly feminine conduct. If she was merely late, he equally objected to such unconscionable inexactitude. He blamed Mr. Marrier. He considered that he had the right to blame Mr. Marrier because he paid him three pounds a week. And he ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... of any intrigue, Dorise," he said in that bland, superior manner which always irritated her. She knew that a dozen mothers with eligible feminine encumbrances were trying to angle him, and that Lady Ranscomb was greatly envied by them. But to be the wife of the self-conscious ass—well, as she has already bluntly told him, she would die rather than become ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... indeed!—There is a sense of life, bustle, mirth, and happiness, in the very air of the dwelling. To be greeted with smiles at your going forth and coming in—to know that there is at least one who serves you without a self-interest—to hear the joyous, feminine laugh, delicate and temperate in the very whirlwind of its ecstacy, ring through the mansion from hour to hour—to hear the little foot pattering about you as you sit at your philosophic studies—to have a friend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... fell on her, Mrs. Carriswood was in her dressing-room, peacefully watching Derry unpack a box from Paris, in anticipation of a state dinner. And Miss Van Harlem, in a bewitching wrapper, sat on the lounge and admired. Upon this scene of feminine peace and happiness enter the Destroyer, in the shape of a note from Tommy Fitzmaurice! Were they going on Beatoun's little excursion to Alexandria? If they were, he would move heaven and earth to put off a committee ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... them just where they had stopped, half way up the hill. Pauline had run the scale of feminine annoyance, from silence to sarcasm, to tears. The tears produced almost the same effect on Harry's determination to keep Pauline from flying that the drops of water had in Owen's carburetor. The spectacle of the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... that she would have recourse to that ordinary feminine excuse, a headache; but were she to do so she would own the whole truth to her master; she would have declared that she so loved the man that she could not endure to be in his presence. She must now let the matter pass as he had intended. She must go to Mr Hall's house, and ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... logical male in him scathingly condemned this feminine defect of character, his private soul was glad of it, for he well knew that he would have been considerably irked by the complexities and grandeurs of high life. But never would he have ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... only passage in which Sophocles expresses feminine wo by silence. In the Trachiniae, Deianira vanishes in the same dumb abruptness when she hears from her son the effect of the centaur's gift ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... masculine attire, but to the wearers of the rich Spitalfields silks and trains aforesaid, even though the trains be but three feet long instead of three yards, the evolution must require no moderate share of feminine tact and dexterity. It is consoling to hear that all manage to accomplish it, by dint of severe training through the week preceding the event; though some are so frightened when the awful moment arrives that ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... clean-limbed, high-bred Kentuckian, the steel-shod, tulip-bodied vehicle, and the faultlessly arrayed young woman tucked in among the costly fur lap robes were three parts of a harmonious whole; and more than one pair of eyes looked, and turned to look again; with envy if they were young eyes and feminine; with frank admiration if they were any age and masculine. For Miss Grierson, panoplied for conquest, was the latest reincarnation of the woman who has been turning men's heads and quickening the blood in their veins since that antediluvian morning when ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... morning when he opened the door of his bedroom; it was there when he came home late at night, and seemed to be sitting up for him, in the reproachful, feminine fashion. When he was writing his letters, there it was, with a prim, furtive air of looking on. It was not like a mere slipper; it had traits and an individuality of its own; there were moments when the jet beads in the buckle sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting at night, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... embodies the truth that there is GENDER manifested in everything—the Masculine and Feminine Principles ever at work. This is true not only of the Physical Plane, but of the Mental and even the Spiritual Planes. On the Physical Plane, the Principle manifests as SEX, on the higher planes it takes higher forms, but the ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... She laughed a feminine low laugh, Yet did not stay her dexterous hand: 'Now tell me of those days,' she said, 'When time ran golden ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... of the women of the Renaissance was based upon classical antiquity, in comparison with which everything which could then be termed modern was insignificant. They might, therefore, have been described as scholarly. Feminine education is now entirely different, as it is derived wholly from modern sources of culture. It is precisely its many-sidedness to which is due the superficiality of the education of contemporary woman when compared with that of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... from his birth up, but in some fashion or degree, loved him, and to him all women were angels. He never, as boy or man, entertained a thought or wrote a line of one of them that was not reverent. He admired, in varying degree, all types of feminine loveliness, but Myra, though he liked her, was not the style that he most cared for. He had always thought her too "washed out." The soul that shone through her rather prominent, light-blue eyes was too transparent, too easily read. He found more interesting the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard



Words linked to "Feminine" :   female, powder-puff, unstressed, masculine, gender, maidenly, matronly, womanlike, feminineness, femininity, unwomanly, distaff, neuter, maidenlike



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