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Lackey   Listen
verb
Lackey  v. t.  To attend as a lackey; to wait upon. "A thousand liveried angels lackey her."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lackey" Quotes from Famous Books



... Fouquet, looking fixedly at the lackey; "if this letter did not reach its proper destination, confess it; for, if a mistake has been made, your head ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... a pot containing a certain portion of the money had been hidden in the ground, and how the remainder had been dispersed, one denarius having found its way into the possession of Marcus Cato the philosopher. This coin Cato acknowledged he had received from a certain lackey as a contribution to ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... whispers, but the priest had passed already into the great hall of the palace and was speaking to a lackey there. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... head and went softly through the second anteroom to the hall. Again, all was empty and silent; neither page, nor sentry, nor lackey to be seen. She knew not why, but a feeling of desolation came over her. She had bidden adieu to the etiquette due to her rank, but this, she thought, was carrying the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Marshal's baton, where agitation without object or resources is perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all sensible conversation; where no one utters a word, but to teach, never imagining that to learn ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... with him his lackey to carry his game. If game is plentiful and the hunter successful, he would, otherwise, soon be compelled to discontinue his hunt from the burden of fish and game. But, freed from that care and burden, he can continue his hunt indefinitely. So, the borrower, even when he ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... short on the flight of steps with an exclamation; he turned sharply, saying, "I have forgotten something," and went back to the salon. The lackey, all respect for a baron and the rights of property, was completely deceived by the natural utterance, and followed him. Gaston returned quietly and unannounced. The Vicomtesse, thinking that the intruder was the servant, looked up and beheld ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... which might in Autumn, prove injurious to a young girl's health. She brought the Somovar, and with her cup of tea was going to relate one of her interminable stories, when a carriage with the imperial escutcheon stopped before the door. A lackey, wearing the imperial livery, entered and announced that her Majesty deigned to order to her presence the ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... at a royal coronation—the first scene in a comic pantomime!—I have my gendarmes!—I have my guard royal!—I have my attorney general—that I do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... surrender with which Lafcadio Hearn took on Japanese form to the bootlicking flattery which Sven Hedin heaps on the Germans. (It is quite futile to seek for an explanation of Hedin's conduct in his Jewish-Prussian descent. He would lackey anywhere. Strindberg dealt faithfully with Hedin's pretensions. Strindberg, alas! is dead, but his exposure of Hedin ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... I was even then disinclined, hating and despising small-talk, and dancing, and hot routs, and vulgar scrambles for suppers. I never could understand the pleasure of acting the part of lackey to a dowager, and standing behind her chair, or bustling through the crowd for her carriage. I always found an opera too long by two acts, and have repeatedly fallen asleep in the presence of Mary M'Alister herself, sitting at the back of the box shaded ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... once he had reached the Mall, in finding Lord Claud's rooms; for everybody knew where they were situated, and looked with some respect upon Tom for inquiring. He was received at the door by a very fine lackey, and taken up a wide staircase, so richly carpeted that the footfall could not be heard upon it. Everywhere his eyes rested upon strange and costly products of foreign lands, such as he had never dreamed of heretofore. Later on he learned that Lord Claud had won this sumptuous suite of rooms from ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... other, repeating the last phrases. One couple after the other stop dancing and follow the Guests in silence. For some time a single couple remain circling on the floor, but they too join the others at last. The musicians, however, continue to play, making the same desperate effort. The lackey turns out the electric lights, leaving only one light in the farthest chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in Gray is sharply ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... wore in the fields, reckoning no longer in dozens of rubles but in dozens of thousands! Indeed, Turkletaub Brothers could now afford to owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars! Mosher dwelling thus, thighs gone flabby, in a seven-story apartment house with a liveried lackey to swing open the front door and another to shoot him ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... officers and gentlemen were waiting. Here Hector gave his name to a chamberlain, who took it into another apartment. He waited for half an hour, and observed that while the officers, one by one, were taken into the room where the lackey had carried his name, the nobles and gentlemen, who were much more numerous, were shown into another, which was evidently the principal reception room. He guessed at once that it was here that the Duc de Bouillon was receiving visitors, while his brother was ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... hand, and could not so soon get him a master as the others did, because the town of Mansoul was now in Lent, but after a while, because Lent was almost out, the Lord Willbewill hired Harmless-Mirth to be both his waiting man and his lackey: and ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... was that the lackey who had but lately returned from Guildford, whilst sitting over the kitchen fire with his cup of mead, had complained of sudden and violent pains, had vomited and fallen down upon the floor in a fit; whereat every person present ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... yourself!" he declared; and his manner might well have become the dress of Buckingham. "Lord Strings is not your lackey this season." ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... Harrowden, and the road easy to find. He was soon there; gave his horse to one of the farm-boys, and went into the kitchen and asked if Miss Fountain lived there. This question threw him into the hands of Jenny, who invited him to follow her, and, unlike your powdered and noiseless lackey, pounded the door with her fist, kicked it open with her foot, and announced him with that thunderbolt of language which fell so ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... clear as Swift's; with his sturdy, peasant nature showing itself in the roundness and directness of his utterance, how little has he of their coarseness. He was not, on the one hand, like Cobbett, an anarchist, or libeller; but yet, on the other hand, as little was he ever a lackey, cringing at the gates of Power, or a train-bearer in the retinue of Fashion. Still less was he, like Swift, the satirist of his times and of his kind, snarling at his rulers, and turning at last to gnaw, in venomous rage, his own heart. And ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... I do? Oh! wouldn't I make them know the difference between their Sovereign Lady and Sam the Lackey? If I had been in your place and that dastard Le Noir had said to me what he said to you, I do believe I should have stricken him dead with the lightning of my eyes! But what shall ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... would write to you you did me a good turn, for, while my first report was rendered, from a sense of duty, I am making this one with a sense of relief—a somewhat scandalous admission. Of course a really good footman would keep his mouth shut. But then I am but an indifferent lackey. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Lieutenant, Then is Arthur Progg, Lieutenant, Then comes Edward Beck as Ensign; J—n Smith and W. Talbot, Are the first and second Sergeants; Sergeants third and fourth then follow, Samuel Scott, S. Long, in order. Joseph Brady and James Lackey, J—s Brunt and C—s Silvers, Are the Corporals, four in number. Forty Privates are recorded, At the closing ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... their guest, for he seemed to consider that he handed the Legation over to them, and he told Mrs. Lee, with true British bluntness of speech, that they were a great bore and he wished they had stayed in Saxe-Baden-Hombourg, or wherever they belonged, but as they were here, he must be their lackey. Mrs. Lee was amused and a little astonished at the candour with which he talked about them, and she was instructed and improved by his dry account of the Princess, who, it seemed, made herself disagreeable by her airs of royalty; who had suffered dreadfully from the voyage; and who detested America ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... looks of chaste austerity, 450 And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear; Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 460 The unpolluted temple of the mind, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... vastly rich of humble origin. She was used to—and regarded as proper and elegant—the ordinary ostentations and crudities of the rich of conventional society. No more than you or I was she moved to ridicule or disdain by the silliness and the tawdry vulgarity of the life of palace and liveried lackey and empty ceremonial, by the tedious entertainments, by the displays of costly and poisonous food. But General Siddall's establishment presented a new phase to her—and she thought it unique in ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... household, which seemed to accept the establishing of the new guest without the faintest surprise, consisted, beside Anne, of the man-servant Auguste, a young, knowing-looking southern Frenchman, with a clean-shaven, lackey's face, the old Spanish cook Isabel, a colossal, unwieldly, hippopotamus-like person with a red nose, watery, bloodshot eyes, and a strident voice, and Don Pablo, who seemed to be a mixture of servant, major-domo, and the confidential attendant of the old plays. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... in the cool twilight of that refectory. The man-servant was so old and battered, and of such a dignity, that he lent a touch of intrigue to the thing. He stood stiffly behind Madame's chair, handing dishes with an air of great reverence—the lackey of a great noble, if I had ever seen the type. Madame never glanced toward me, but conversed sparingly with Cristine, while she pecked delicately at her food. Her name ran in my head with a tantalizing flavour of the familiar. Albani! D'Albani! It was a name not uncommon in the Roman States, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... service, and that cheerfully, which his own need or that of others might have required of him. The colors of a parrot, however, were not fit for a son of man, and hence his look of sympathy. His regard was met only by a glance of plain contempt, as the lackey, moved by the same spirit as his master, left him standing in the hall—to return presently, and show him into the library—a room of mahogany, red morocco, and yellow calf, where George sat. He rose, and shook ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... King's coach and thought himself Lord of Paris; but at the end of three or four days he found himself much mistaken. Ballads and libels still flew about. The Frondeurs appeared bolder than ever. M. de Beaufort and I rode sometimes alone, with one lackey only behind our coach, and at other times we went with a retinue of fifty men in livery and a hundred gentlemen. We diversified the scene as we thought it would be most acceptable to the spectators. The Court party, who blamed us from morning to night, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... street, so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... splendid picture of that magnificent court and the conditions which eventually brought about the revolution. The precarious position of every member of that court from La Pompadour down to the meanest lackey, whose very lives were in constant danger from the whims of the weak but self-indulgent king, is made very real ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation —everything. He spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed. We were more than charmed—we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We never even asked him his price. This man—our lackey, our servant, our unquestioning slave though he was—was still a gentleman—we could see that—while of the other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his pocketbook a snowy little card and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 'Tell her Highness I will come immediately; but that, as I was not commanded for so early an hour, I am unfortunately not quite ready,' she called after the lackey's retreating form. She flung off her morning gown and began hastily to don a silken bodice, but it took her longer to dress without Maria's help, and it was some time before she stood at the door of her Highness's anteroom. She was met by one of the tiring-women whom she particularly disliked, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... want a type of those abbes? Take the Abbe Maury. Proud as a duke, insolent as a lackey, the son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... care, thou flyest me as ill fortune;— Care the consuming canker of the mind! The discord that disorders sweet hearts' tune! Th' abortive bastard of a coward mind! The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death, Bearing the letters which contain our end! The busy advocate that sells his breath, Denouncing worst to him, is most his friend! O dear, this care no interest holds in me; But holy care, the guardian of thy fair, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable

... you in the walk, gentlemen," said Count Caspar, immediately instructing a lackey to send the carriage after them. He and Lorry walked on together, Anguish lingering behind, having caught sight of the Countess Dagmar. That charming and unconventional piece of nobility promptly followed the prime minister's example and escorted the remaining ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... I not watch her for a whole week at Saumur? 'Tis well we have not Aramon and the rest with us. The fewer there are the larger the shares. Can Malsain deal with the lackey?" ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... have the United States play the role of a bully, or enact the demagogue. But surely there is a medium between that and the despicable inconsistency of unfriendliness towards those of our own political faith, and of lackey serviceableness towards a crowned head. Kings do not hesitate to discourage republicanism everywhere. A republic should not hesitate to encourage it anywhere. Self-respect in such a matter would win the respect of the world by ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... thing," said he, bitterly, "to prosecute me as they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey." ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... let us be alone, and keep our own secret, and do our own work. I hate him, but he is too much a gentleman for a lackey to touch." ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... many months after the assembly of Moulins a cut-throat by the name of Du May was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing.[419] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420] his first story was generally credited. The rumor was current that in December, 1566, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... ungloved!—it shakes, 'tis true, But mark its tiny size, (High birth's true sign) and shape, as on The lackey's arm it lies. That hand ne'er penned a useful line, Ne'er worked a deed of fame, Save slaying one, whose sister he— Its ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... Lord Marlborough—the most talked of man in Europe, and some say, at this juncture, as powerful as half a dozen Kings—rose and handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so important—and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest general so serves him, the little potentate feels ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... housekeeper soon appeared, who informed him that he was expected, and that he was to go up to the first story. The surgeon did as he was told, and opened the door of an anteroom all hung with white. Here he was met by an elegant lackey, dressed also in white, frizzed and powdered, with his white hair tied in a bag wig, carrying two torches in his hand, who requested the bewildered doctor to wipe his shoes. Besse replied that this was quite unnecessary, as he had ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... a lackey, that would venture to speak thus before you," said Adrienne to her aunt, unable to conceal her disgust, "and yet you oblige me to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine's private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. The marshal, thick necked, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is not quite that, and if you venture ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell

... lackey in a low tone, handing Aramis a letter. And as the lackey carried a torch in his hand, he placed himself between the superintendent and the bishop of Vannes, so that both of them could read at the same time. As Fouquet looked at the fine ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... shall be my lackey,—the chief messenger," laughed Blackbeard, showing his yellow teeth. "Hat in ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... great impatience.] O! contemptible!—a trifling, quaint, haughty, voluptuous, servile tool,—the mere lackey of party and corruption; who, for the prostitution of near thirty years and the ruin of a noble fortune, has had the despicable satisfaction, and the infamous honour—of being kicked up and kicked down—kicked in and kicked out,— just as the insolence, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought 'twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped him. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... used to my fool's coat that I don't know myself in my solemn doctor's gown. But your information was right; that book was indeed a very respectable work. Yet nobody reads it; and if I had writ nothing else, I should have been reckoned, at best, a lackey to Hippocrates, whereas the historian of Panurge is an eminent writer. Plain good sense, like a dish of solid beef or mutton, is proper only for peasants; but a ragout of folly, well dressed with a sharp sauce of wit, is fit to be served up at ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... now, Who are in Love's hand? I do not think I'd care Though the vile world should with its lackey Slander Trample and tread upon my life; why should I? They say the common field-flowers of the field Have sweeter scent when they are trodden on Than when they bloom alone, and that some herbs Which have no perfume, on being bruised die With all Arabia round them; so it is With ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... and without waiting for my hair to be dressed I proceeded to the bishop's palace, and making a great deal of noise I almost compelled the servants to take me to his room. A lackey who was at the door informed me that his lordship was still ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Sergeant, I am a man of my word. It is true that I enticed a young gentleman here, at one time I was his lackey. Later on we became soldiers together. I was subsequently discharged because I was growing blind. I am speaking the truth, I was blind then. The young man had confidence in me, and one day, when he saw me in the street at Dukla, he ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... had thrust his feet into large square-toed slippers with high heels, and, wrapped in a large silk dressing-gown, covered with golden ornaments embroidered in relief, walked to and fro in his bedroom, sending every minute a fresh lackey to see what was going on, and ordering them immediately to go for the Abbe de la Riviere, his general counsellor; but he was unfortunately out of Paris. At every pistol-shot this timid Prince rushed to the windows, without seeing anything but some flambeaux, which were carried quickly ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... of Texas, made a furious assault on the Secretary of War, last Saturday. He says Senators, on the most urgent public business, are subjected to the necessity of writing their names on a slate, and then awaiting the pleasure of some lackey for permission to enter the Secretary's office. He was quite severe in his remarks, and moved a call on the President for certain ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... apprenticeship from youth to old age in vice—let him devote a fortune, perhaps colossal, to the wholesale demoralisation of his kind—and he may be surrounded with the adulation of the so-called virtuous, and be served upon its knee, by that Lackey—the Modern World! I say not that Law can, or that Law should, reach the Vice as it does the Crime; but I say, that Opinion may be more than the servile shadow of Law. I impress not here, as in Paul Clifford, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... parasites (distinct from the other well-born, more aristocratic genus of smell-feast) prowled vigilantly without the castle walls and beyond the limits of the royal pleasure grounds, finding occasional employment from lackey, valet or equerry, who, imitating their betters, amused themselves betimes with some low buffoon or vulgar clown and rewarded him for his gross stories and antics with a crust ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber's powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the lexicographer's heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy! ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that what you boast of— Your happiness, peasant?" Exclaims an old lackey With legs weak and gouty. 240 "Treat me, little brothers, I'm happy, God sees it! For I was the chief serf Of Prince Peremeteff, A rich prince, and mighty, My wife, the most favoured By him, of the women; My daughter, together ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to America what Alexander was to Asia—captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... JEAN. You lackey-love, you mistress of a menial—shut up and get out of here! You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted to-night. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... relatives obtained for him the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage, dressed in an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank all sorts of people for having placed him in the position of a lackey. However much he tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it was not "the right thing," and yet he could not refuse it for fear of hurting those who felt sure they were giving ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do you know—but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap—who have been captain of ships!—to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low—to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... had certainly been my fate, had not the enchantment between body and soul been broke by this philosopher. Thus, till the age I should have otherwise lived, I am obliged to watch the steps of men; and if you please, shall accompany you in your present walks, and get you intelligence from the aerial lackey, who is in waiting, what are the thoughts and purposes of any whom you inquire for." I accepted his kind offer, and immediately took him with me in a hack ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... Calderon, William II. has morally beheaded Bismarck, without any other motive than his imperial caprice. Sic volo, sic jubeo. So now will the Chancellor venture to present himself in parliament because he has been dismissed from the royal palace like a lackey? Quae te dementia caepit? When, after Waterloo, Napoleon, adopting the theatrical style of an Italian artiste, suitable to his tragical disposition, and repeating a few badly learned Plutarchesque ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... was softly opened, and a lackey, who made his appearance at the threshold, beckoned ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... was sure that God's long-lingering word would be fulfilled, he did not mind though he had to be the lackey of his brothers, the Midianites' chattel, Potiphar's slave, Pharaoh's prisoner, and a servant of servants in his dungeon. So with us, the measure of our willing acceptance of our present tasks, burdens, humiliations, and limitations is the measure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Woronzow?" asked the princess, while, wholly unembarrassed by the presence of the lackey, she played with the profuse dark ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... gave thy letter to the porter, who passed it from lackey to lackey till it reached the lady ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... before dinner, was nothing short of majestic. The taxi-driver (by a slight effort of the imagination easily transformed into a uniformed lackey) unloaded a half-dozen bags and boxes; next there alighted from the taxi a trim little maid in black with a rug over her arm, a hamper in one hand, a square leather box, books and magazines in the other. Then, by degrees, Aunt Maria emerged, first a purple hat, covered ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... intercourse with the other; when whispered sentences constitute the conversation, and all the friendly recognition of wine-drinking, which renews acquaintance and cements an intimacy, is replaced by the ceremonious filling of your glass by a lackey; where smiles go current in lieu of kind speeches, and epigram and smartness form the substitute for the broad jest and merry story. Far from it. Here the company ate, drank, talked, laughed,—did all but sing, and certainly enjoyed themselves heartily. As for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the fortress was led by Mexia, who somewhat burned to wipe out the memory of his lost battery at the river's mouth. And as blind Fortune's dearest favor flutters often to the lackey while the master snatches vainly, so it befell in this case, for Mexia's chance raid, a piece of mere bravado to which De Guardiola had given grudging consent, was productive of results. Bravado for bravado, interchange ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... the master been regarding us he would have seen no reason for mortification in the manner of his servant. The man was extremely polite and attentive, suggesting various refreshments, such as wine and biscuits, and I never was treated by a lackey with ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... your twenties in your thirties. Another five years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a piano" will give way to remarks about "a graceful second subject in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... that his unguarded words might have drawn upon him the displeasure of Sindbad, so he tried to excuse himself upon the pretext that he could not leave the burden which had been intrusted to him in the street. However the lackey promised him that it should be taken care of, and urged him to obey the call so pressingly that at last the porter ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... than a sermon from Brother Ambrose, and after an interval of compliments a servant was sent to find him. It chanced that Buonarroti was walking with the man whom Francis of Holland calls "his old friend and colour-grinder," Urbino, in the direction of the Thermae. So the lackey, having the good chance to meet him, brought him at once to the convent. The Marchioness made him sit between her and Messer Tolomei, while Francis took up his position at a little distance. The conversation then ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... the honour of kissing her hand; I left the apartment by another door and found myself on a back staircase, down which I descended without any one taking any notice of me, until, as I was looking for my carriage at the outer door, a lackey bustled up, and with a patronising air, said, 'Lord Lyndhurst, can I ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... character is a young man who is supposed to be a revolutionist. He enters the service of a Petersburg dandy in hopes of meeting there a minister whom he wants to kill. The employer of the pseudo-lackey, who is not aware of any of his projects, is a masterful presentation of a type which we know as the sybaritical citizen; the character of the valet is so fantastical that the account of his adventures belongs absolutely to the "genre" ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... leave," I said, interposing quickly. "M. de Sillery may say too much or too little. Let a lackey take a message, bidding him go to the queen's closet, and he will ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... a young man, very gaily dressed, moving quickly about at the far end of the Pig Market, and behind him an old lackey, bent double with the weight of two great baskets that he carried. The baskets were piled with books, clothes, and gewgaws of all kinds; and 'twas the young gentleman that hawked his wares himself. "What d'ye lack?" he kept shouting, and would stop to unfold ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... that I must be drunk or insane, but my serious mood and energetic investigations soon altered that notion. I might myself have doubted my mental soundness had it not been for the cross in my hand, which I at once recognized as being that worn by the nun, and had not a lackey finally confessed to having beheld the strange figure. He was coming from the colonnade with a tray of refreshments when he saw me in conversation with her. The mask had something familiar about her, he said, but he could not ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth

... old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a 10 beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copper-spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and 15 wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... said a powdered lackey, opening the folding doors of a magnificent dining-room. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle Zephyrine. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newberry has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-colored suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber's powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him, (his Scotch lackey following at the lexicographer's heels, a little the worse for Port wine that they have been taking at the Miter), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... carry it with me?' I cried in scorn. 'Do you think that when I came here, alone, and not with fifty dragoons at my back, I carried the Cardinal's seal in my pocket for the first lackey to find. But you shall have it. Where is that ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... Cluet deposed: that, observing a lackey to M. d'Aubray, the councillor, to be the man Lachaussee, whom he had seen in the service of Sainte-Croix, he said to the marquise that if her brother knew that Lachaussee had been with Sainte-Croix he would ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... reasonable sum to some poor scholar who sits behind and copies it all afterwards, while he takes his afternoon-ride towards Charlottenburg, or saunters along Unter-den-Linden, ogling the pretty English girls, and spying every chance of saluting, whenever a royal equipage, preceded by a monkey-looking lackey, rolls by. These are, of course, exceptions, rarer in the present than formerly. In Padua, in the sixteenth century, it became notorious that the richer students never attended in person, but always sent one of their servants who wrote a good hand. Laws ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... joy, surrounding and shaking hands with him. The boxes were filled with ladies, and the scene was very amusing. Senor M——, whose box we occupied, ordered in cakes and wine, and about one o'clock we left the ball-room and returned home, one of our soldiers acting as lackey.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... hung his head; he raised it, however, for one moment. Isidore, indignant at seeing these men thus hunt for his master in every corner, ventured to defy them. He opened a drawer and said, "Look and see if he is not in here!" The Commissary of Police darted a furious glance at him: "Lackey, take ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... the harpsichord rose, surveyed the intruder with a haughty stare, and was about to speak when a lackey in silver-embroidered livery came hastily toward her and said ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... "His wretched lackey!" vociferated the judge. "By all the fiends in flames, I'll shoot that scoundrel Vincent with less remorse than ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... desperately with the pretty waitress in the kitchen below, heard his master's swift, heavy step on the veranda, and hastened out only in time to clamber into his seat as Merwyn drove furiously away in the rain and darkness. Every moment the trembling lackey expected they would all go to-wreck and ruin, but the sagacious animals were given their heads, and speedily ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... Audience, then: when the old Knight thy Master has raged his fill for the loss of the chain, tell him thou hast a Kinsman in prison, of such exquisite Art, that the devil himself is French Lackey to him, and runs bare-headed by his horse-belly (when he has one) whom he will cause with most Irish Dexterity to fetch his chain, tho twere hid under a mine of sea-coal, and ne'er make Spade or Pickaxe his instruments: tell ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... SAINT JEAN to the carriage: a Lackey comes presently in a gorgeous livery, with buttons like little ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... The lackey stepped back, threw open the folding doors, beckoned into the entrance hall, and with loud voice announced: "The lords of the duchy of Cleves to wait upon his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... the excellence of his speech—above all, the personality of the witness—gave the lie to his garb. Moreover, he displayed a quiet dignity of manner which was as different from that of the most exquisite lackey as is sable from civet. From resting upon him the eyes of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... indignation of the Prince was extreme. He had already taken offence at some insolent expressions upon this topic, which the Cardinal had permitted himself. He now sent back the commission to the Duchess, adding, it was said, that he was not her lackey, and that she might send some one else with her errands. The words were repeated in the state council. There was a violent altercation—Orange vehemently resenting his appointment merely to carry out decisions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone, the flames of which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod, which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a geometrical turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism, or to see to it that they did not make too unusual angles. Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic visages, purple with the fire and the wine. There was a man ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... incident does not redound to his credit, for the spectacle of a distinguished artist bribing a lackey to smuggle him out of an hotel and imprison in her bedroom the woman with whom he had been living, is ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... client in the details of their approaching interview. This envoy even took pains to indicate in what sort of toilet ladies were expected to appear. The gown must come up high about the neck and might be of any colour desired, or of black silk if the wearer was in mourning. Jewelry was not forbidden. A lackey in red livery would usher the strangers into the audience-chamber. Their petition must be carried in the hand. In the throne-room—where ladies were permitted to gaze to their hearts' content on the splendid display of Japanese ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... burst into a loud laugh. 'And to think,' she cried, 'that I talked to this lackey from London to Malines without ever suspecting him! Higginson, you're a fraud—but ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... burial rite of an ancient Scythian king (as described by Herodotus, iv. 71), at whose tomb were strangled his concubine, cup-bearer, cook, groom, lackey, envoy, and several of his horses. Such cruel customs were, of course, and still are associated in many lands with the cult of the dead; but, on the other hand, there are gentler and more beneficial aspects observable to-day in China and Japan. There the mighty ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... apparent signs. The moon not only turns while we turn, but its rotations on its axis keep exact time with its revolutions round our globe; it accompanies us as we encircle the sun, facing us all the while, never turning its back upon us; it waits on us like a link-bearer, or lackey; is our admiring Boswell, living and moving and having its being in the equability it derives from attending its illustrious master. An African sage once illustrated this philosophical principle of the greater controlling the less, by the following fine conundrum. "Why does ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... things largely her own way, was able to read a lecture like the wrath of God. However, on the whole, the couple got along passably well—for Karl never took Louise too seriously! When Frau Louise's efforts to make a lackey of him got on his nerves, Karl called his cronies and away they ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... deliberately kills a rather harmless coxcomb of a marquis who rebukes him for making this tapage; and such a still greater brute (for in the duel he had himself been wounded) that he throws out of the window an unfortunate lackey who gets in his way at a party where Octave has, as usual, lost his temper. Finally, he is a combination of prig, sneak, cad, brute, and fool when (having picked up and read a forged letter which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... curious!" said Madame de Lucenay, with a burst of sardonic laughter. "Know that when a lackey robs me—I do not break ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... in no time. I wonder you don't show him that respect—it wouldn't hurt you one morsel, I guess.' Says he, quite miffy like, 'Don't he know the way to court as well as I do? If I thought he didn't, I'd send one of my niggers to show him the road. I wonder who was his lackey last year, that he wants me to be his'n this time. It don't convene to one of our free and enlightened citizens, to tag arter any man, that's a fact; it's too English and too foreign for our glorious institutions. He's bound by law to be there at ten o'clock, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... out into the street, I believe, but she was bundled bag and baggage on board a steamer for London. Did I tell you these people lived in Hamburg? Well yes—sent to the docks late on a rainy winter evening in charge of some sneering lackey or other who behaved to her insolently and left her on deck burning with indignation, her hair half down, shaking with excitement and, truth to say, scared as near as possible into hysterics. If ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... shall be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall no more go down,' and 'there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, "having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows awaits him, and I would ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... MacLouis, and let them know that I wait their pleasure," said the Prince. "If my uncle desires to have the credit of shutting the father's apartment against the son, it will gratify him to know that I am attending in the outer hall like a lackey." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... the lists of love,' and straightway his power vanishes, the poorest booby of twenty-four can jostle him aside; before, the object of reverence, he is now the butt of ridicule. The instant he asks right to win the heart of a woman, a boy whom in all else he could rule as a lackey cries, 'Off, Graybeard, that realm at ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... royal lackey with a big red book and a letter for Clement, and in the letter it said that the book was from ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... Porthos, "haven't you still in your service your old lackey, that good, that brave, that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was visited also upon all associated with Bonaparte in the conduct of affairs at that time. Murat was "a brute and a thief"; Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, and Mme. Letitia were courtesans; Berthier was a shuffling, time-serving lackey and tool; Augereau was a bastard, a spy, a robber, and a murderer; Fouche was the incarnation of every vice; Lucien Bonaparte was a roue and a marplot; Cambaceres was a debauchee; Lannes was a thief, brigand, and a poisoner; Talleyrand and Barras were—well, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assur'd destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other. And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put aside love's pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn suddenly about into the rabbi of precision; and after these years of ragged practice, pose for a hero to the lackey who has found you out? In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to morality in married life. Daily they drop a little lower from the first ideal, and for a while continue to accept these changelings with a gross complacency. At last Love wakes and looks about him; ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... given her with her fan. She has never had no breeding, you see, and there are uglier stories about her than I like to tell you, Miss Aureely; and as to the young lady, Sir Amyas saw her with his own eyes slap the lackey's face for bringing her brown sugar instead of white. She is a little dwarfish thing that puts her finger in her mouth and sulks when she is not flying out into a rage; but Colonel Mar is going to have her up ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 'This ain't respectful to our great nation to keep a high functionary a waitin' arter this fashion, is it? Guess I'd better assart the honour of our republic by goin' away; and let him see that it warn't me that was his lackey last year.' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton



Words linked to "Lackey" :   goody-goody, apple polisher, bootlicker, sycophant, flatterer, adulator, fawner, ass-kisser, servant, flunky



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