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Hunchback   Listen
noun
Hunchback  n.  A back with a hunch or hump; also, a hunchbacked person.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hunchback" Quotes from Famous Books



... either for the body of the victim or for the murderers. When the men left the room the magistrate locked the door and put the key in his own pocket. The gendarme in the neighbouring apartment was sent down to stand in the courtyard at the entrance to the house. The sexton, a little hunchback, was ordered to remain in the vestry at the other end of the passage from ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... of young fowls, and an immense root of fresh kava. Speeches were made, after which mats were spread out for the dancers, who had been called by the sound of a bugle. There were two long rows of them, with two comic men and a hunchback, apparently the king's jester. They first sang a song of welcome to us, and then sang, danced, and acted several pieces—all well done and some very droll indeed. The hunchback excelled particularly in an imitation of a circus that was here not long since. Louis could not speak successfully ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... joys as well as of all the attractions of childhood. He was oppressed because he was weak, and laughed at for his deformity. In vain the little hunchback opened his arms to the world: the world scoffed at him, and went ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... lips. "Well, you see, miss, he were a twin, and he never did thrive from the very earliest. But he wasn't a hunchback, not like he is now, at first. The poor mother died when they was born, and p'raps it were a good thing, for she'd have grieved terrible if she could have seen what he were a-going to grow into. For she was a lady born and bred, married beneath her, you know. Nor she didn't have any such ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... to the inn owned by the Hunchback of St. Nicholas. Here also the door was opened directly, to appease them; but they reappeared amid a great outcry, with three children in their arms and surrounded by the Hunchback, his wife and his daughters, clasping their ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... another example of vanished glory, only two tenements occupying the princely residence of the Wyatts, famous in the history of State and Letters. Sir Henry, the father of the poet, felt the power of the Hunchback Richard, and was racked and imprisoned in Scotland, and would have died in the Tower of London but for a cat. He rose to great honour under Henry VII, and here entertained the King in great style. At Allington the poet ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... da Polenta, who was wedded to the hunchback Giovanni Malatesta and murdered by him with her lover Paolo, is known not merely to students of Dante, but to readers of Byron and Leigh Hunt, to admirers of Flaxman, Ary Scheffer, Dore—to all, in fact, who have of art and letters ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the wedding night in the water-closet is repeated from the tale of Nur-al-Din Ali Hasan (vol. i. 221), and the mishap of the Hunchback bridegroom. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... fulsome speech, telling him that they had raised an altar to him as their presiding deity, and that, marvellous to relate, a splendid palm tree had grown up on it: "That shows," replied the Emperor, "how often you kindle a fire there." To Galba, a hunchback orator, who was pleading before him, and frequently saying, "Set me right, if I am wrong," he replied, "I can easily correct you, but I ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... hunchback in the roof, "that Priam, the Fault Finder, is holding the strata back, but wants the relief to come on three centuries hence, that I may spit ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... pressure of the multitude behind them. The husband tried to pass out first, dragging the lady by the arm, but at that instant he was pulled vigorously into the street, and his wife was torn from him by a stranger. The terrible hunchback saw at once that he had fallen into a trap that was cleverly prepared. Repenting himself for having slept, he collected his whole strength, seized his wife once more by the sleeve of her gown, and strove with his other hand to cling to the gate of the church; but ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... it that the bride was fearfully ugly, infirm, or at least hunchback, perhaps idiotic, or, at all events, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was deformed, almost a hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him, and went through into the room beyond. There she found by the half-extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the old ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... happier child of fortune, did Jim rescue from the ash-heap and bring to Matty, who had a passionate love for flowers; and not seldom during the spring and summer months would he take a long trudge into the suburbs, and gather wild blossoms to gratify the craving of the little hunchback. On one of these occasions he stole a little, fluffy chicken, which had wandered from its mother's guardianship beyond the garden palings of a small cottage, and, hastily buttoning it beneath his worn jacket, made off as fast as his feet would carry him to bestow his prize upon Matty, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... waved her sun-browned hand holding the cherries aloft, the breeze blowing fresh from the southwest tossed her hair so that some loose strands shone like rimpled flames. The sturdy little hunchback did leap with surprising activity; but the treacherous brown hand went higher, so high that the combined altitude of his jump and the reach of his unnaturally long arms was overcome. Again and again he sprang vainly into the air comically, like a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... the story of a little hunchback who lived on Cape Elizabeth, on the coast of Maine. His trials and successes are most interesting. From first to last nothing stays the interest of the narrative. It bears us along as on a stream whose current varies in direction, but never ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... the priest, good fool," said the Count, with a smile at the hunchback's sudden terror. "You have nothing to fear ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... in my time, little and big, new and old, built of stone and of wood, but of one house I have kept a very vivid memory. It was, properly speaking, rather a cottage than a house—a tiny cottage of one story, with three windows, looking extraordinarily like a little old hunchback woman with a cap on. Its white stucco walls, its tiled roof, and dilapidated chimney, were all drowned in a perfect sea of green. The cottage was lost to sight among the mulberry-trees, acacias, and ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... The hunchback made an irrelevant gesture. "The man wrote—to inquire if I would buy his title. I declined." Then he turned to my father. "Pendleton," he said, "you know about this matter. You know that every step I took was legal. And with pains and care how I got an order out of chancery to make this purchase, ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... had listened to the fisherman's story did not accept it with such scorn as the lobster catcher had evinced. There was a sound of excited voices when Jeb had finished, and one young fellow with a hunchback and a cunning face ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... place at his tomb. M. Littre, in his Fragment de Medecine Retrospective, describes seven miracles which occurred at his tomb, some of which cures, however, were very gradual. We are also told that when a humble hunchback bowed the knee in adoration at the tomb of St. Andreas, his irresistible faith instantly released him from his unnatural rotundity. In 1243 a Ferrara writer was at Padua, and while attending vespers at the tomb where the sainted body of the Minorite Anthony reposed, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... talking about it. Such a feature in one's outlook was really like a hump on one's back. The difference it made every minute of the day existed quite independently of discussion. One discussed of course like a hunchback, for there was always, if nothing else, the hunchback face. That remained, and she was watching him; but people watched best, as a general thing, in silence, so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil. Yet he didn't want, at the same time, to be tense and solemn; ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... its dim, long aisles; without, you peer aloft to view its gargoyled waterspouts, leering down like nightmares caught in the very act of leering and congealed into stone. The spirit of the place possesses you; you conjure up a vision of the little maid Esmeralda and the squat hunchback who dwelt in the tower above; and at the precise moment a foul vagabond pounces on you and, with a wink that is in itself an insult and a smile that should earn for him a kick for every inch of its breadth, he draws from beneath his coat ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... most fashionable London dentist of the day, St. Leger Swift. Never did Frenchman exceed him in volubility of utterance, or in gesture significant, supplying all that words might fear or fail to tell; never was he surpassed by prattling barber or privileged hunchback in ancient or modern story, Arabian or Persian; but he was not a malicious, only a coxcomb scandal-monger, triumphing in his scavoir dire. St. Leger Swift was known to everybody—knew everybody in London that was to be or was not ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... up to Democrates was all but a hunchback. His bare arms were grotesquely tattooed, clear sign that he was a Thracian. His eyes twinkled keenly, uneasily, as in token of an almost sinister intelligence. What he whispered to Democrates escaped the rest, but the latter began girding up ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... vulgar despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them. Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... suddenly appear as a hunchback, and, dancing out into the centre of the figure, perform various antics to attract his partner. After a while she would dance up—deformed also—and the two, bringing their bodies into contact, and performing various disgusting contortions, would ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... could be watched without weariness. It was like listening to music. Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. Slieve Louan was followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next hill to a reptile raising itself ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... another with an offensive and brutal laugh. There are those who are not even touched by contact with physical suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering. These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... roared the irascible old man. "Clear outen here, and go over to Warren Jones's; he wants to see ye. Hold on!" he added, as Derrick was about to leave the room. "On your way stop and tell that hunchback butty[2] of yourn to be on hand in the new breaker at sharp seven to-morrow morning, if he wants to keep his job. ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... so that you may not put down your beautiful feet blindly upon a trackless waste of doubt and mistrust. If you come with me to-night, you come alone. I have no woman in my desert home, excepting one old hunchback slave, a withered bough but faithful. No woman has set foot within the belt of palms surrounding my house, and without the sand stretches! Mile upon mile of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... And the hunchback, with his fiddle under his arm and his bow hanging loosely from his left hand, was duly presented. Mademoiselle's eyes beamed graciously as she held out her hand and said what pleasure it gave her to make the acquaintance ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... lull that followed, a conspiracy was raised against the life and throne of the monarch, in which his natural son, Pepin the Hunchback, was implicated. It was discovered in time, and all the conspirators were put to death, with the exception of Pepin, who was confined ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... was a girl of about eighteen, short, and very much deformed. Though not exactly a hunchback, her spine was curved; her breast was sunken, and her head deeply set in the shoulders. Her face was regular, but long, thin, very pale, and pitted with the small pox; yet it expressed great sweetness and melancholy. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... together, took her Catechism and primer, and went down to the summer-house. She noticed that Polly's expression was sulky, and that she was rolling her eyes at Dilsy. But Polly was always tormenting Dilsy. Dilsy was a little hunchback negro, that everybody but Polly felt sorry for and tried to turn the soft side of ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... to express a dislike for margarine, when butter was prohibited. It was unpatriotic for a blind hunchback with heart disease to protest that he was no soldier, if he were ordered to the Front. For though the Censor, in the early period of that war, dealt merely with news and opinions which might aid the enemy, yet, as the value of adding to a nation's enemies became ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... in a jabber, valgame Dios! so wild and strange, that I remained staring at him with mouth and eyes open. The other was neither tall nor red-faced, nor had he hair about his mouth, and, indeed, he had very little upon his head. He was very diminutive, and looked like a jorobado (hunchback); but, valgame Dios! such eyes, like wild cats', so sharp and full of malice. He spoke as good Spanish as I myself do, and yet he was no Spaniard. A Spaniard never looked like that man. He was dressed in a zamarra, with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... a tallish man, so dressed as to look like a hunchback, and a hunchback so tall was a most singular figure. He had joined them in the dark, and the rest were unable to guess who it could be, and he, for his part, would not tell. They thumped him and pushed him, but at each attack he only leaped from the ground like a circus clown, and made ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... been added that some thus gambolling in the tower "remained there, spinning over and over a little longer," becoming fainter, fewer, feebler, and so vanishing—we read, "The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at last he dwindled to a leg, and even to a foot, before he finally retired; but he vanished in ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... in a great city, just like this city of New York, a poor little hunchback. He kept a second-hand book-stall, where he made barely enough money to keep body and soul together. He was very sad at times, because he knew scarce any one, and those that he did know did not love him. He had passed a sickly, secluded youth. The children of his neighborhood would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... are of royal blood also. You married the Princess of Spain; I married the Princess of Bavaria. It was a condescension, but still I did it. My first wife was the Princess of England. How can we admit into a house which has formed such alliances as these a woman who is the widow of a hunchback singer, a mere lampooner, a man whose name is a byword ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... no change. It was faded, out of fashion by a full half-century, and his only luxury a silk comforter which he knotted loosely about his neck. He had never worn a collar since Chopin's death. It was two of the clock when he stumbled downstairs. At the doorway he met Bernard the hunchback landlord. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... a terrible pity he came out here," he said. "Of course it is not his fault in the slightest degree. One might as well blame a man for being born a hunchback; but if there should be a row out here it will be terrible for him. I can quite understand his feeling about it. If I were placed as he is, and were called upon to fight, I should take a dose of prussic acid at once. Men talk: about their civilization, but we are little better than savages ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... show sympathy, ought to have sympathy with any one. Let Destiny drive forth her scythed car through the overwhelmed and trembling mass of humanity! Shall I be the idiot to throw this decrepit form, this mis-shapen lump of mortality, under her wheels, that the Dwarf, the Wizard, the Hunchback, may save from destruction some fair form or some active frame, and all the world clap their hands at the exchange? No, never!—And yet this Elliot—this Hobbie, so young and gallant, so frank, so—I will think of it no longer. I cannot aid him if I would, and I am resolved—firmly resolved, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... "the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal of a dream of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by the king's orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback—a man whose very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... him, first of all, because of his personal appearance. That was striking enough to excite wonder in anybody, for he was one of those remarkable men who possess great beauty of countenance allied to unfortunate deformity of body. The face was that of a poet and a dreamer, the body that of a hunchback and a cripple. Painter or sculptor alike would have rejoiced to depict the face on canvas or carve it in marble—its perfect shape, fine tinting, the lines of the features, the beauty of the eyes, the wealth of the dark, clustering hair, were all as near artistic ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... before its sudden cessation, while continuing to be a fashion in courts and high society, it reached the wealthy bourgeoisie of the North. At Arras, where Jacques Bretel and Adam de la Halle, the hunchback, were eminent in song, it had its latest ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... the episcopate, M. de Soissons thought he might offer himself as a colonel. His Majesty, who did not know the military ways of this abbe, refused him anew, both as an abbe and as a hunchback, and as a public libertine ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... them. Four poor women, poor beyond poverty, came to ask me not to go into the convent. 'The convent will be always able to get on without you, miss.' Such poverty as theirs is silent, they only asked me not to leave them, not to go to the convent. Among them was poor Lena, a hunchback seamstress, who has never been able to do more than keep herself from starving. It is hard that cripples should have to support themselves. She has, I think, always lived in fear lest she should not be able to pay for her ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... to do, I went to a French bookseller in whose shop I made the acquaintance of a witty hunchback, and I must say that a hunchback without wit is a raga avis; I have found it so in all countries. Of course it is not wit which gives the hump, for, thank God, all witty men are not humpbacked, but we may well say that as a general ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... hunchback," returned her Ladyship warmly; "only a little high shouldered; but at any rate he has the most beautiful place and the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... house which had been hit. They appeared to be in a hurry to get to the Square, so I went up one of the side streets to look (p. 056) at the damaged house. In a cellar near by I found an old woman making lace. Her hunchback son was sitting beside her. While I was making a few purchases, we heard the ripping sound of an approaching shell. It grew louder, till at last a terrific crash told us that the monster had fallen not far off. At that moment a number of people ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... the personation of the Navaho God of Harvest. The name signifies "Hunchback." He is represented always in a stooping posture, carrying a staff to aid him in supporting a burden of corn, bean, pumpkin, and other seeds which he carries upon his back. The personation is conventional, rather than ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... that "prettiness" of which Gwendolyn was so openly proud, but it was gentle and intelligent, and had a look of delicacy which suggested chronic suffering, patiently borne. Amy had not far to seek the cause of this pathetic expression, for Mary Reese was a hunchback. In her attire there was as much simplicity as in Amy's own, but without grace or harmony ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... The hunchback still continued to advance, his long arms and claw-like fingers assisting him up the steeper places. Again he stopped and appeared to be swearing at his men for not coming faster. He was now within range. I could not help looking on one side to watch ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... Envied The Story of the Second Calendar, Son of a King The Story of the Third Calendar, Son of a King The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor First Voyage Second Voyage Third Voyage Fourth Voyage Fifth Voyage Sixth Voyage Seventh and Last Voyage The Little Hunchback The Story of the Barber's Fifth Brother The Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother The Adventures of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura Noureddin and the Fair Persian Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp The Adventures of Haroun-al-Raschid, Caliph ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... who succeeded him in 1550, seems to have had the same affection for learning; but he was willful, harsh, and cruelly ambitious, and cared, an old writer says, for nothing so much as perpetuating the race of the Gonzagas in Mantua. He was a hunchback, and some of his family (who could not have understood his character) tried to persuade him not to assume the ducal dignity; but his haughty temper soon righted him in their esteem, and it is said that all the courtiers put on humps in honor of the Duke. He was not a great warrior, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... figures of Anita, Venza and Snap had started off. Hunchback figures with the tanks mounted on their shoulders. I bounded and caught them. I touched Snap. We ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... wanted for a local procession, Haydn undertook to play the part. Unluckily, he was so small of stature that the instrument had to be carried before him on the back of a colleague! That the colleague happened to be a hunchback only made the incident more ludicrous. But Haydn had rather a partiality for the drum—a satisfying instrument, as Mr George Meredith says, because of its rotundity—and, as we shall learn when we come to his visits to London, he could handle the instrument ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... I have certified to his agent, Master Walter, the Hunchback, my existence, and peculiar propinquity; and momentarily ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... fearlessly into the white world beyond the lake, his wide snowshoes sinking ankle-deep at every step. There was neither rock nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the Indian God. The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight, and out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... because I feel so 'dreadful glad' when they go away. So, also, it compensates one to read certain books for the sake of the delicious sensation one experiences on finishing them! What a pile of 'Les Miserables,' Fantine? C'est assez miserable. The 'Hunchback' is the least deformed of Hugo's offspring; but I read that last Sunday morn—no; I mean last Saturday evening; for I went to church on Tremont street, last Sunday. What's this? it looks as tempting as a banana, and is not unlike one in color. 'Melibaeus ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... have done at any moment by shooting us with their firearms. Still our position was very far from an agreeable one. My uncle, who had not spoken another word, firmly kept his seat, notwithstanding the efforts of the ruffian crew to pull him off his saddle. In the meantime, the hunchback, whose task, it seemed, was to secure me, came on, fixing his fierce little eyes on my pistol, which I fancied ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... 'spiritualists' (with the spirits) have scant pleasure in contemplating the future. Their proverb is, 'A corner in the world of matter is better than a world of spirits,'—Page 407, Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Languages, by Rev. J. G. Christaller.] in Fanti-land the hunchback woman becoming a mother, and in England his Satanic Majesty beating his wife. Off the Eketekki village we saw, for the first time, bad snags, which will require removal. About sunset the Aka-kru settlement, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... say, having seen him—John understood the meaning of M. le Chameau's queer name. He was a hunchback, but a gay little man nevertheless; reputedly a genius in the art of shooting rapids. He was also a demon to work, when allowed; but the sergeant would not ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and Thirty-seventh—I know the man. His name is Sakko-Samshi." "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the Presence. "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!" roared the sovereign—"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?" "Lord of Cranes of Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner, unmoved, "command him to blow his ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's passage to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey[450] the other day, in one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of the Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... with his drudge, Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge Dooms not his work, but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... services to be done for us by many lame and halt of her acquaintance. Having bought my boat (I come, in time, to be willing to sell it again for half its cost to me), I require a menial to clean it now and then, and Giovanna first calls me a youthful Gobbo for the work,—a festive hunchback, a bright-hearted whistler of comic opera. Whether this blithe humor is not considered decent, I do not know, but though the Gobbo serves me faithfully, I find him one day replaced by a venerable old man, whom—from his personal resemblance to Time—I should ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... snapped at him I have no idea. I do not believe he hurt him; but the star-fish gradually relaxed his hold, and fell slowly and helplessly on to his back; on which the dragonet looked as silly as the Sultan of Casgar's purveyor when the hunchback fell beneath his blows. Another dragonet came hastily up to see what was the matter; but prudently made off again, and left the star-fish and his neighbour as they were. I waited a long time by the tank, watching for the result; but in vain. The star-fish, looking abjectly silly, lay with his white ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... soul, not a sound—except that of my own feet and the heavy panting of the porter. We wound through the streets, round corners, through low arches, a long way up the steep cobbles, and suddenly down broken steps. They hurt my feet, and I stumbled and almost fell, but the hunchback walked along nimbly, hurrying ever. Then we came into an open space, and the wind caught us again, and blew through our clothes, so that I shrank up, shivering. And never a soul did we see as we walked on; it might have been a city of the dead. ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... still he saw that the speaker was a little hunchback, and that he had in his hand a small book from which he was reading aloud to the people about him. And this fact surprised the boy not a little, for it was very unusual for any person in the lower ranks of life to be able to read; and yet this man was evidently ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... you as if you were intruding upon their silence and reserve. Never were the eyes in a human head so beautiful as a camel's. There is a limpid softness, an appealing plaintiveness in their expression which drags at your sympathies like the look in the eyes of a hunchback. It means that, with your opportunities, you might have done more with your life. Your mother looks at you that way sometimes in church, when the sermon touches a particularly raw nerve in your spiritual make-up. I always feel like ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... police headquarters, thinking of the sad state of that man, and in the hallway I ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to "the commissioner." The older was a hunchback girl, who led her younger brother (he could not have been over five or six years old) by the hand. They explained their case to me. They came from Allen Street. Some "bad ladies" had moved into the tenement, and when ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... of a hunchback, with the sharp lean features that generally accompany deformity. He wore a pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... more than merely coarse and ragged. They were so ill-fitting as to be quite grotesque; even as he appeared in black outline against the moonrise, the coat-collar in which his head was buried made him look like a hunchback, and the long loose sleeves looked as if he had no hands. It at once occurred to me that he had somehow managed to change his convict clothes for some confederate's clothes which did not fit him. Second, there was a pretty stiff ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... was in the room (but I didn't mention her, she was less than nothink in our house), went up to Mrs. Deuceace at onst, and held out her arms—she had a heart, that old Kicksey, and I respect her for it. The poor hunchback flung herself into Miss's arms, with a kind of whooping screech, and kep there for some time, sobbing in quite a historical manner. I saw there was going to be a sean, and so, in cors, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... marshalled by Chance, who distributed infinitely varied costumes to the performers. She would take one and array him like a king, with tiara, bodyguard, and crown complete; another she dressed like a slave; one was adorned with beauty, another got up as a ridiculous hunchback; there must be all kinds in the show. Often before the procession was over she made individuals exchange characters; they could not be allowed to keep the same to the end; Croesus must double parts and appear as slave and captive; Maeandrius, starting ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... Gideon's mind was made up. He would do without the police. He must face the other side of the dilemma, and be Robert Skill in earnest. What would Robert Skill have done? How does a gentleman dispose of a dead body, honestly come by? He remembered the inimitable story of the hunchback; reviewed its course, and dismissed it for a worthless guide. It was impossible to prop a corpse on the corner of Tottenham Court Road without arousing fatal curiosity in the bosoms of the passers-by; as for lowering it down a London chimney, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... A little hunchback, a pen behind his ear and a bundle of papers in his hand, entered the erstwhile sacristy. It was the citoyen Beauvisage, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... choked himself with the bone of a fowl (which is still in his throat), that he sat in torture for ten minutes with a strong apprehension that he was going to make the good Pichot famous by dying like the little Hunchback at his table. Scribe and his wife were of the party, but had to go away at the ice-time because it was the first representation at the Opera Comique of a new opera by Auber and himself, of which very great expectations have been formed. It was very curious to see him—the author of 400 pieces—getting ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... world everything is liable to swift and sudden change; and, one day in early spring, when the rivers had melted, the father set forth with his little son in a teliezshka [37] drawn by a sorrel steed of the kind known to horsy folk as a soroka, and having as coachman the diminutive hunchback who, father of the only serf family belonging to the elder Chichikov, served as general factotum in the Chichikov establishment. For a day and a half the soroka conveyed them on their way; during which time they spent the night at a roadside ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... old Master Scientist there came a vision of five human figures, rising specterlike from the case they were entombed in; straight, proud young figures, two of them; two others old, like himself, and the fifth a gnarled hunchback. Very different were they, each from each other, but each face had its mark of genius; and each face, to Eliot Leithgow, was warm and smiling, for these five men ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... winking drop of liquid silver, The first exquisite star. Now the half-light Tidied away the dusty litter parching Among the cobbles, veiled in the colour of distance Shabby slates and brickwork mouldering, turn'd The hunchback houses into patient things Resting; and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... hide its agitation. Every one of them gave or loaned her a talisman—Tempest, a bit of rabbit's foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time); Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... from the limping, and eighty from the one-eyed man, But when the hunchback comes, say "Lord ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... to Selene, and measured her step; to those of the sufferer with as much nicety as if she felt everything that Selene herself did; thus, without speaking, they reached the door of the factory; there, in the first court-yard the little hunchback made Selene sit down on one of the bundles of papyrus-stems which lay all about the place, by the side of the tanks in which the plants were dipped to freshen them, and arranged in order, built up into high heaps, according ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... day of their marriage Louis Racine had made a painful discovery. A heritage of his fathers, which had skipped two generations, suddenly appeared in himself: he was becoming a hunchback. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... One of the attendants ushered in a short man of somewhat remarkable personality. He was barely five feet in height, and an extremely fat neck and a corpulent body gave him almost the appearance of a hunchback. He had black, beady eyes, a black moustache fiercely turned up, and sallow skin. His white gloves had curious stitchings on the back not common in England, and his silk hat, exceedingly glossy, had wider brims than are ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Godfrey of Lorraine, who was not friendly to the party of the Emperor Henry III., while on a raid in Italy, pressed his suit with such insistency that the widowed Beatrice promised to marry him and at the same time gave her consent to a betrothal between Matilda and Godfrey's hunchback son, who also bore the name of Godfrey. This marriage with an unfriendly prince, after so many years of imperial favor, and this attempt at a consolidation of power for both present and future, so angered Henry that he insisted that Beatrice must have yielded to violence in this disposition ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... child!" he replied, "you know not the devising power of this man. He has an agent here in this place, in the shape of old Crisp, the hunchback. It has been his plan, under promise of marriage, to decoy you from this house; he would probably have left his child to Crisp's good agency, with orders to join you. Herbert loves you, and would have gone willingly in your company, but alone with Richard he ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... I reached the door of the palace a hunchback opened the door to receive me, and when I saw the princess resting on the wings of birds, at the sight I trembled with fear and fell down to the earth. For this reason when I was taken in to talk with the princess I did just what she wished, and she asked about us and I told her ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... went the merry bells; squeak, squeak, the tightened strings beneath the persistent scraping of the rosined bow. On his throne in Fools' hall, Triboulet, the king's hunchback, leaned complacently back, his eyes bent upon a tapestry but newly hung in that room, the meeting place of jesters, buffoons ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... Again there was a pause and a desperate battle for air; and again, after it was over, she went on in that strangled whisper, while her eyes, like the eyes of a drowning animal, clung neither to Patty nor Corinna, but to the austere face of the old hunchback. "'What am I to do with the child?' I asked, and he stepped right out of the circus crowd, and answered 'Give me the child. I like children'—" An inarticulate moan followed, and then she repeated clearly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... money being spent in the city, I had no doubt that they would not weigh for a moment such a consideration against the chance of getting a true heroic picture for the city. I never talked so well in my life, and said so many flattering things to the hunchback and his friends, that at last they said that I should have my own way; and that if I pleased to go up to London, and bring down the painter of Lazarus to paint the mayor, I might; so they then bade me farewell, and I have come up ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... a blush of shame for her father overspreading her face. It did not occur to her that the slave rejected as useless could be any other than the hunchback, whom her husband had bestowed upon the centurion a few days before; and for the receiver to try to sell back a gift to the giver was a depth of meanness for which no filial partiality or affection could find ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... fighting he had,—say half a century of it, off and on, during the seventy and odd years he lasted in this world. With the Donnybrook we spoke of; with the Nurnbergers; with the Dukes of Bavaria (endless bickerings with these Dukes, Ludwig BEARDY, Ludwig SUPERBUS, Ludwig GIBBOSUS or Hunchback, against them and about them, on his own and the Kaiser's score); also with the French, already clutching at Lorraine; also with Charles the Rash of Burgundy;—lastly with the Bishop of Bamberg, who got him excommunicated and would ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... that he was the victim of a conspiracy. Miss Cushman's success knew no abatement. She played a round of parts, assisted by James Wallack, Leigh Murray, and Mrs. Stirling, appearing now as Rosalind, now as Juliana in "The Honeymoon," as Mrs. Haller, as Beatrice, as Julia in "The Hunchback." Her second season was even more successful than her first. After a long provincial tour she appeared in December, 1845, as Romeo at the Haymarket Theatre, then under the management of Mr. Webster, her sister Susan assuming ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... furniture for my two rooms, always wearing my black wig, hump, and blue barnacles, so that I might be well known. I sent the things to the Rue du Provence, and six silver spoons and forks which I bought on the Boulevard Saint Denis, still in my disguise as a hunchback. I returned to put all these in order in my domicile, I said to the porter that I should not sleep there for two days, and I carried away my key. The windows of the two rooms were fastened by strong shutters. Before I went ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... sufficed to convince Frankh of his pupil's proficiency, and Joseph was duly installed in the drummer's place. Owing, however, to his small stature, it was found necessary to call in the help of a schoolboy of his own height, and as this boy happened to be a hunchback, he was enabled to carry the drums on his back at the proper level for Joseph to beat them. The comical effect thus produced proved too much for the gravity of many of the bystanders, but Joseph went through ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... choir-master informed me that several foreign gentlemen had been asking for me. Thereupon half a dozen persons presented themselves, greeted me as a brother democrat, and begged me to procure them free entrance tickets. Among them I recognised a former dabbler in literature, a man named Hafner, a little hunchback, in a Calabrian hat cocked at a terrific angle, to whom I had been introduced by Uhl on the occasion of my visit to the Vienna political club. Great as was my embarrassment at this visit, which evidently astonished our musicians, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... demanded the hunchback. 'Will you take yourself off, before I do you a mischief? ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... Prince, his brothers, cousins, or other kinsmen, might be chosen Tanist, by election of the people over whom he was to rule. One certain cause of exclusion was personal deformity; for if a Prince was born lame or a hunchback, or if he lost a limb by accident, he was declared unfit to govern. Even after succession, any serious accident entailed deposition, though we find the names of several Princes who managed to evade or escape this singular penalty. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... We carefully registered the principal accomplice of the 'Black Terror,' a little hunchback with a face to send chills down your back. After we had him in about half the scenes of a sequence of action he was taken sick and died of influenza. First we waited a few days; then we had to take all that stuff ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... Bukits I observed two harelipped men, one hunchback, and an unusual number of persons with goitre. These natives drink water by the aid of a leaf folded into an improvised cup. Eight of the upper front teeth are cut. Suicide is not known. Their only weapon at present is the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... my father, my good lord, who said He would not have a Hunchback for his son— So do I pardon you the savage slight. My lord, that I am not as straight as you, Was blemish neither of my thought nor will, My head nor heart. It was no act of mine.— Yet did it curdle Nature's ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... figure raised the tapestry, and the guests saw before them a little hunchback, whose bald skull rose in a point. He was clad, in the Asiatic fashion, in a blue tunic, and wore round his legs, like the barbarians, red breeches, spangled with gold stars. On seeing him, Paphnutius recognised Marcus the Arian, and fearing lest ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... further stated that there was nothing remarkable about Richard, that he was not the hunchback "lump of foul deformity" so generally ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... La Fallotte was a hunchback, vehemently suspected of dealings in necromancy, and of riding to nocturnal orgies on a broomstick, according to the custom of witches. Certain persons had seen her putting the harness on her broom in the stable, which, as everyone knows is on the housetops. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... recital of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights" (France, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... these my Australian travels thus to witness from a verandah on a beautiful afternoon at Portland Bay the humours of the whale fishery and all those wondrous perils of harpooneers and whale boats of which I had delighted to read as scenes of the stormy north. The object of the present pursuit was "a hunchback" and it being likely to occupy the boats for some time ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... humila. Humble humiligi. Humble, to be humiligxi. Humerus humero. Humid malseka. Humidity malsekeco. Humiliate humiligi. Humility humileco. Humming-bird kolibro. Humorous humora. Humour humoro. Hump gxibo. Hunchback gxibulo. Hunger malsato. Hungry malsata. Hungry, to be malsati. Hundred, 100 cent. Hundredweight centfunto. Hunt cxasi. Hunting-lodge cxasdometo. Hurdle brancxbarileto. Hurl aljxeti. Hurrah hura. Hurricane uragano. Hurry rapidi. Hurry (trans.) rapidigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... of the 15th century in the Library of the Vatican, which appears to be almost a counterpart of Galland's, and likewise contains only the first 282 Nights. Galland's MS. wants a leaf extending from part of Night 102 to the beginning of Night 104, and containing an account of the Hunchback and his buffooneries; this hiatus is filled up in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Hunchback" :   crookback, spinal curvature, cripple



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