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Low-down   Listen
adjective
low-down, lowdown  adj.  
1.
Of the most contemptible kind; contemptible; mean; base; vile; of people or the actions of people; as, a lowdown sneak thief.
Synonyms: abject, base, despicable, low, lowdown, miserable, vile.
2.
Having the soulful feeling of early blues; of jazz.
Synonyms: funky.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Low-down" Quotes from Famous Books



... and folks without guns, mostly. Low-down stuff! He's got three or four, I believe. I never could see why the Nelsons ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... me to keep my mouth shut? You want me to become an accomplice in this beastly, low-down ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... want me to know was the fact of her first escapade with the fellow called Jimmy. She had arrived at figuring out the sort of low-down Bowery tough that that fellow was. Do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action—usually for some small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism—of your early life? Well, it was that sort of shuddering that came over Florence at the thought that ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... murderers are running around scot-free. They've locked up three fellows just to keep the people from thinking too much. They don't want anybody to ask, 'What are the police for?' You see what I mean? I tell you that such a low-down rascal, who commits a murder and steals lots of money, cannot hide his bloody clothes; nor the money, either. He's not used to having so much money. All the neighbors know his coat and breeches; and such a man hasn't any trunk where he can hide his things. He doesn't know how to manage ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... time was moving round the table, Rattling the silver things faster and faster— "Yes sah! Yas sah, soon as I'se able I'll bring yo' dinnah as shore as yo's bawn." "Quit talking about it; hurry and be gone, You low-down nigger," said dear ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... You call that war! It wasn't war," declared Jowett spasmodically, grasping the rail of the fire-engine as the wheel struck a stone and nearly shot them from their seats. "It wasn't war. It was terrible low-down treachery. That Gipsy gent, Fawe, pulled the lever, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... "You low-down traitor!" he said bitterly. "You vile scoundrel! I've caught you at last and caught you dead to rights. You're the most contemptible thing that breathes. You're a disgrace to your uniform. You ought to be wearing a wooden overcoat and ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... never been a public-school system even for the more highly favored race, and where this more highly favored race deliberately assigns those who are not of its color to a permanent inferiority. The laws of caste are to be inflexibly enforced against all people of color who would rise from their low-down conditions. This is our Southern mission field, which God has committed to us, according to our ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various

... anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it's a gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God—must be, there's so many of 'em; but a gossiping man—he can't find any word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down skunk." ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... you dogs! you scoundrels! you miserable, low-down ruffians you! Oh, that I should have lived to see this day! Thankful am I that my father and grand-father are safe in their graves! This would have broken their hearts. Why, you horrible villains,—do you mean to tell ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... gave us the low-down on that during class last week. Suppose your group got the same lecture. You should've ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... a matter of fact," said the young man, "I've always rather hushed up my first name, because when I was christened they worked a low-down trick ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... hand-and-glove with him. Now Nelie, I don't want to interfere with you anyway and I won't if you say the word. But I never felt just righte about that fellow, and what I done long ago to make you tollerate him, and now I want to make it up to you if I can. He is a common low-down person, and he isn't fit to speake to you, and I hope you wont speake to him. The divorce, the way I look at it, don't make any difference; hese just as much married as what he ever was, and if he had never been married atoll, it wouldn't of made any difference as far as I feel about it. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... ornery, mean, low-down, sneakin' coyote!" He took a long, leaping step over the things on the floor—a step in the direction of the longshoreman. As he sprang, he shifted his tobacco quid from one cheek to the other. "Say! I'm plumb chuck-full o' y'r goin's-on! I'm stuffed with y'r fool pre-form-ances! I'm ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... you gwine ter feel fus' rate long ez you sticks ter me. Fer I's a better man dan dat low-down runaway nigger Primus dat you be'n wastin' ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... "if the lady wasn't present, I'd show you that I take no orders from any yellow—that is, from any low-down Don." ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... isn't to the point. Surely you see that as far as public opinion goes I'm dished either way. The more I think of it the plainer it becomes. If I marry Olivia I let myself in for connection with a low-down scandal; if I don't, then they'll say I left her in the lurch. As for the effect on any possible promotion there might be in store for me, it would be six of one and half a dozen of the other. If I married her, and there was something ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... cast about her. There is a mood in which a deprivation of high comedy may drive one to low-down farce. To-day people are even going farther. A worthy stage is dead, they say; and they patronize, somewhat willfully and contemptuously (or with a loose, slack tolerance that is worse), the moving pictures. Perhaps it was in some such mood that ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... doggonedest, low-down wharf-runner that ever robbed poor Jack of his wages. That's Kipping. Furthermore, he never signed a ship's articles unless he thought there was considerable money in it somewhere. I tell you, Captain ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... I told her we thought it was low-down to tell stories. And Peggy just laughed and said they wouldn't act so stiff as to tell the truth all the time.—Miss Margery, when are you going there again? I do want to go with you. The baby has a new tooth coming. You can feel it. I want to see it when it comes through. May I go with ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... low-down houn' dawg, he didn't show up at all, but we had a magnificious occasion wivout him, jes' ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... of the whistle, though, I fell to thinking of Mihanovich. What a romance that man's life must have been! They tell me that about forty years ago he'd landed in that place, a Russian Pole, ignorant of the language, without any money or friends, a low-down beach-comber. And here he was, a millionaire. Every tug on the river has his big M on the funnel. He had fleets of steamers, mines, railways, banks; and he was even tendering for the contract of the new docks the city wanted. No wonder others came to make their fortunes. No gentility ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... few days after it was written—and up went Mr. Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicion was laid in the cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged. It was a suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and when you come to internal evidence, it's a big field and a game that two can play at: as witness this other internal evidence, discovered by the writer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... glanced up on Paula, and Paula glanced down at the fire, and at the gnarled beech fuel, and at the wood-lice which ran out from beneath the bark to the extremity of the logs as the heat approached them. The low-down ruddy light spread over the dark floor like the setting sun over a moor, fluttering on the grotesque countenances of the bright andirons, and touching all the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... don't care how much it costs. It will be ample satisfaction to see just one low-down chicken thief squirming ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... his health does not break down under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to be out of the house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she will find in him a tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp, a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... put it on the market for me. It wants a man behind all these sort of things you know. I can do all the donkey work, but I've got no head for business. I never know the difference between a loss and a profit. It was partly over this that I quarrelled with my people—they said it was low-down to make face cream and sell it—they're awful snobs! So I just cleared off and changed my surname and came here. I'm quite happy, and if I haven't got as much money as I had, I don't mind—I've got my liberty, and ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... river bank. I knew what was on; I knew without lookin' that the old chief's girl was right there beside him, huggin' her knees and listenin' with both ears. I didn't like to think about it, for she was a nice little yearlin', and it looked to me like Mike was up to his usual devilment. Seemed like a low-down trick to play on an injunoo like her, and the more I studied it the warmer I got. It was a wonderful night; the moonlight drenched the valley, and there was the smell of camp-fires and horses over everything—just the sort of a night for a guitar, just the sort of a night to make your ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... was selling Featherlooms, and you were out for the Sans-Silk Skirt Company, both covering the same territory, and both running a year-around race to see which could beat the other at his own game. The only difference was that I always played fair, while you played low-down whenever you ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... full, an' she don't have to say airy a thing she don't want to; an' if you don't pull your freight sudden for th' brush, I'll shore shoot six different kinds of meanness outen your low-down murderin' carcass!' ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... Dan de Quille, Mark's closest friend, to act the part of Judas—to tell Mark privately that he, was going to be presented with a fine pipe, so that he could have a speech prepared in reply to Pope's. It was awful low-down in Dan. We arranged to have the affair come off in the saloon beneath the Opera House after ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... "It's a low-down way for a man to treat a woman, especially his wife," said Joe, his indignation mounting ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... a fellow would descend to such a trick!" exclaimed the indignant Josh; "but then Tony Pollock and his crowd are ready to do anything low-down and crooked. They'll never be able to join our scout troop, after we ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... "The low-down, ruffianly swab!" Drake burst out. "But there! that's just the sort of beast he looks. Well, Mr Frobisher, if, as you say, he dislikes you—and from the way he looked at you I should say that 'hate' was the more correct word—I ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... want you to do is to keep an eye on him. Find out what his next move is. He told you he was the reporter who had located the evidence that convicted Rives. Did he tell you how he got hold of it?—how he double-crossed Rives by low-down trickery? He doesn't know how to be loyal to anybody. I'll be surprised if ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... stumbling block in the way of a chap who is trying to get out of his old rut. But it passes my comprehension how he can change, and play fair and square, when all his life he's been so tricky and low-down mean." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... 'You low-down monkey!' Goldwater almost flung his brush into the poet's face. 'You compare my wife to a kangaroo! Take your filthy manuscript and begone where ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... much 'bout de Yankees, though I does 'members de Ku Klux. They visit pappy's house after freedom, shake him, and threaten dat, if him didn't quit listenin' to them low-down white trash scalawags and carpetbaggers, they would come back and whale de devil out of him, and dat de Klan would take notice of him ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look a here, ain't it lucky I got the old man's cutter down ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... he shouted. "I've got it! I've solved the whole derned mystery. Come to me like a flash. Of all the low-down, cowardly—" ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... with me when I go down to the cocoa plantation we own along the Amazon, and use it exploring where a white man has seldom been seen. You can just stay here and grow up with the country, while I'm doing great stunts. But as long as I stay here I'm going to stop this talk about trickery and low-down dodges. You're responsible for most of it, Frank Bird. I warn you what's coming to you." "Perhaps," said Frank, pleasantly, "you would be kind enough to tell me also when this awful punishment is going to fall on my poor ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... As a matter of fact, I had n't had anything to do with the lynching. That had been done by some cowboys who were in town the day before, and the fellow they 'd done for was an ornery cuss of a half-breed Mexican, who was a whole lot better off dead than alive, anyway. He tried to play some low-down game on 'em at poker, and they just strung him up and rode off. Some of our fellows heard about it, and three or four of us decided it would be a good thing to let Coolidge know what our ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... the pus." I don't ask wot he's goin' to take and I don't care. He can take it all if he wants it, 'cos it stands to reason, don't it, mister?' says Bill to the lawyer, 'that a man wouldn't be so dirt mean as to play a low-down trick on his own mate. So you see, mister, him an' me warn't mates 'cos we had two pusses an' mates is ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... uster be a bum hangin' round the river front in Saint Louee who hed preacher's papers, en wore a long-tailed coat. Thar wan't no low-down game he wudn't take a hand in fer a drink. His name wus Gaskins; I hed him up fer mayhem onct. I'll bet he's the duck, for he hung round Jack's place most o' the time. Whatcha ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... help. Squire Kirby an' Mr. Earle, him that lives in that big white house they call Freedom Hill, up the road whar you been workin', they headed the petition. They are the richest folks 'round here. They heered the trial, Tom. They know you was set upon in that low-down place. Mr. Earle, he went to the capitol with me to see the governor. Him and the governor are ol' friends. Mr. Earle, he bought my railroad ticket and paid my board in Greenville. He talked to the governor ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... play you such a mean trick. I'm too fond of you, George. There's never been anybody just like you. You've been mighty good to me. I've never met a man who treated me like you. You're the only real white man that's ever happened to me, and I guess I'm not going to play you a low-down trick like spoiling your life. George, I thought you knew. Honest, I thought you knew. How did you think I lived in a swell place like this, if you didn't know? How did you suppose everyone knew me at Rector's? How ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... "It's low-down mean, that's what it is," Shorty rushed on, virtuously indignant. "I wouldn't wonder somebody filled you full of lead for it, an' ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... it's for what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any such ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... 'You've bin an hour tellin' that yarn o' yours! Ef ye could spin it out to fill two chapters of a book—yer fortune's made! For you'll show that a successful hoss trade involves the highest nash'nul characteristics. That what common folk calls "selfishness," "revenge," "mean lyin'," and "low-down money-grubbin' ambishun" is really "quaintness," and will go in double harness with the bizness of a ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... little bit better, a little bit richer in knowledge, than we find it, these poor little lives of ours, such as they are, and that's not much—will not have been lived in vain. Of course, as you know, I'm just a common, low-down materialist who can't rise to the poetry of things as you can with this gorgeous ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... Mistah Swift!" exclaimed the darkey. "Jest let dat low-down-good-fo-nuffin' Andy Foger come 'round me, an' Ah'll make him t'ink he's de inside ob a chicken coop, dat's ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... told you about the "Low-down Wilkes," have I? They're the pleasantest people in Three Meadows and we're very clubby. The nice old maid on the wharf at Bath told me about them and advised me to have the woman do my washing, but warned me that I should have to come unto her delicately, like Agag. Being the poorest ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees —as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... yo'self a man!" he murmured in a voice filled with contempt. "Why, a low-down coyote is a gentleman alongside of yo'. I wondered why yo' looked so well fed, while the rest of the camp was starvin'. Men, search ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... meditatively, "that Lorne will get in by more than one. He wouldn't like to owe his election to a low-down trick ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... fence-building and ditch-digging and such back-breaking toil; that they were range men and they demanded range work or none; that if they must dig ditches and build fences and perform like menial tasks, they preferred doing it for themselves. "That," said Andy, "makes us out such dirty, low-down sons-of-guns we'd have to climb a tree to look a snake in the eye, but it's got the grain of truth that'll make it go down. We DON'T love this farming graft, and the Old Man knows it. He's heard us kicking often ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... got to hear them,” I said. “I’m no missionary, nor missionary lover; I’m no Kanaka, nor favourer of Kanakas—I’m just a trader; I’m just a common, low-down, God-damned white man and British subject, the sort you would like to wipe your boots on. ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Nick impatiently. "How's the White Squaw o' the Moosefoots goin' to savvee a low-down bat like Cree. I ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... half drunk when his father has any money to give him, and just smart enough to keep the old man mesmerized. Lately Henry's been in a mighty serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town, spending money freely, and they went after him. A client of mine rents their ground to them and told me all about it. It seems they claim that one of the daughters in the Johnson family ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... Jubilee; by Jove, Bunny, we ought to be there. I wouldn't lean forward in Piccadilly, old chap. If you're seen I'm thought of, and we shall have to be jolly careful at Kellner's.... Ah, there it is! Did I tell you I was a low-down stage Yankee at Kellner's? You'd better be another, while the waiter's in ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... in point of fact, it really is ours," remarked Donald Hall. "But it would be a rotten, low-down trick for us to sell it away from the school and from 1921, ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... genius as long as he took only our clothes," Dick retorted. "But now that your things are gone as well, it's a mean, low-down bit of business." ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... inclination to take the trail and keep it to his destination. "Well, I'll go alone, then. I've got to kinda square myself for the way I threw it into Andy; and you know blamed well, Weary, they played it low-down on him, or they'd never have got that rope on him. And I'm ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... salary, and if he can't preach the things we want to hear, he'll find himself going hungry, or forced to dig along with those he is so worried about. I don't find anything in the Bible that tells me to associate with every low-down person in the city, and I guess I'm as good a Christian as anyone ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... we care? ... We've got you, Neuman," burst out Anderson, his heavy voice ringing with passion. "But it's not your low-down plot thet's r'iled me. There's been a good many men who've tried to do away with me. I've outplayed you in many a deal. So your personal hate for me doesn't count. I'm sore—an' you an' me can't live in the same place, because you're ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... bottom of one of Nora's trunks is a set of my old gloves. There will not be any one up at the tennis-court this time of day. If you are not a mean cuss, if you are not an ordinary low-down imitation of a man, you'll meet me up there inside of five minutes. If you can stand up in front of me for ten minutes, you need not make any explanations. On the other hand, you'll hike out of here as fast as boats and trains can take ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... f'r his gloryous deeds, an' sarves him with a warrant f'r batin' his wife. 'Tis not in th' nature iv things that it shudden't be so. We'd all perish iv humilyation if th' gr-reat men iv th' wurruld didn't have nachral low-down thraits. If they don't happen to possess thim, we make some up f'r thim. We allow no man to tower over us. Wan way or another we level th' wurruld to our own height. If we can't reach th' hero's head we cut off his legs. It always ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... low-down skunks I ever seen, you sure are the skunkiest!" said Nueces. "The sheriff was right after all. Cur-dog fits you to a T." He finished washing out the cut on Foy's head as he spoke. "Now the bandages, Anastacio. We'll have the blood stopped in a jiffy. Funny he hasn't come to. It's been a long ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... from his gun-pits far away, Low-down, well south, an angry foe doth roar, He opens out again upon another day And rakes the slope with shrapnel as before. But only working parties on the top are found, The rest, save ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... the hell did that for me?' cried out the man angrily. 'Look here; he's killed a beef for a couple of steaks. He's taken that and left the rest for the buzzards. The low-down, hog-hearted son of ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... as you are, Pell! Don't forget that!" he cried. "You're a dog—a low-down dog." It was all he could do not to spring upon this craven and ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... enough for the bare necessities of life. My father, as I told you, was a shepherd—a strong, fine-looking man over six feet in height, and as broad-chested as a Hercules—he herded sheep on the mountains for a Glasgow dealer, as low-down a rascal as ever lived, a man who, so far as race and lineage went, wasn't fit to scrape mud off my father's boots. But we often see gentlemen of birth obliged to work for knaves of cash. That was the way it was with my father. As soon as I was old enough—about ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... plain an' fair as day," he exclaimed, "I reckon you've hit it right plum center first shot, lad. You bet we'll be on the watch to warn them poor Indians, an' if there's any fightin' we'll sho' help to rid this country of them ornary, low-down, murderin', cut-throats. It's a great head you've got for young shoulders, Charley. You've reasoned it out like a detective and made your plans like ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... foul," insisted Uncle Martin as they paused at the parting of their ways. "Low-down, underhanded work—do you get what ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... follows," his uncle answered. "Every low-down onery sheep man for a hundred miles around has had his eyes on these lands for the last five years, waiting for Uncle Sam to put 'em in the open market. Now the government has finally paid the Indians' claims and those fellows ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... Wade. "But it doesn't pay, an' yet I still kept on bein' that way.... Belllounds, my name's as bad as good all over western Colorado. But as man to man I tell you—I never did a low-down trick in my life.... ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... Washington is not far, as the plane flies. There was a stop or two for gasoline, but it was only a day later that they were seated in the War Office. Thurston's card had gained immediate admittance. "Got the low-down," he had written on the back of his card, "on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... "needs to recuperate. To feed on such a night as this in some low-down hostelry on the level of the street, with German waiters breathing heavily down the back of one's neck and two fiddles and a piano hitting up ragtime about three feet from one's tympanum, would be false economy. Here, fanned by cool breezes and surrounded ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... of me when I'm sick—an' dey take care of me when I'm well—an' I gwine to stay right here. But you? You jes' go on wid de Yankees, an' black der boots. Dey'll free you," and Uncle Billy's voice rose in prophetic tones—"an you'll keep on blackin' boots! Go 'long now, you low-down, dollar-an'-a-quarter nigger!" as Jeems Henry backed away. "Go long wid yo' Yankee marsters—and git yo' freedom an' ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... Bishop sold me, and then they got talking pretty freely about old times. I gathered that this man that took the little girl is a pretty big man around here. Of course I wasn't expecting anything like that; I thought naturally he'd be a low-down sort to have been mixed up in a thing ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... hog it. Wouldn't do that fer the world. So if yer short, I can put up with seventy-five—" (he studied the other's face), "an' I might do with fifty. I 'preciate your position, an' I ain't low-down ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... a gulp. "Honestly, Agnes, it's a shame. It's a low-down trick the governor played to put me in this helplessly ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... a low-down, no-account man like me even laugh where there's happiness? Why, if that young feller goes to work an' spoils it all by kickin' the bucket, I'd die ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... it? Sure I nade something softer soon or I'll get as tough as a railway contractor. I suppose ye'd call it a soft job running a train where a herd of—no, ye didn't hear what I called them, Miss Tressa—where a filthy, low-down gang of craters dressed up like men and walking on their hind legs, is running loose. Lifted about four miles of rail, they did. This locomotive engineer's been doing railway building for half a day; and if ye could do my job as well as I can do yours, Torrance, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... go, too!" said Nesbitt. "Say, I'm awfully sorry I made that break, Dunn. It was beastly low-down to round on a chap like ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... the answer. "It was that we downed the 'ringer.' They couldn't get away with their low-down trick. We put one over on 'voconometry ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... meeting him squarely, and taking a tighter grip of her stick. "I ain't ever seen you hit anything but a woman, an' a girl, or some poor animal that didn't dare bite back. You're a coward, Jed Hawkins, a low-down, sneakin,' whiskey-sellin' coward—and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... a mushroom hood over its head. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite round or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priest coming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and ugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-down beggars, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... 'I wouldn' 'spec' ter be 'vited ter de weddin',—a common, low-down fiel'-han' lak I is. But I's glad ter heah you en Jeff is gittin' 'long so well. I didn' knowed but w'at he had 'mence' ter be a ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the Colonel, growing dangerously red in the face, "don't you shake no meat in MY face like that! Don't you dare do it! I won't have no butcher shake meat in MY face. You low-down beef-killer. That's all ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... politics does not appeal to me," she said, drily. "Any party that adopted such means would completely alienate my sympathies. No, my dear Sir Leslie, don't stoop to such low-down means. Mannering is honest, but infatuated. Win him back by fair means, if you can, but don't attempt anything of the sort you are suggesting. I, too, know his history, from his own lips. Any one who tried to use it against him, would forfeit ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... alive or enny of that kind of talk. It is al-rite fer boys who are used to ruffin it, but it is not nice fer girls so if I was you I wood go easy on it, and hot dogs aint machine guns, they are sausidges that are made from those low-down german dogs that heve short legs, but say they test buly in a roll. The vilets and pollywogs have come and I wood send you some but I guess they wood dry up before you got them. Ennyway you neednt worry much about the war now that Uncle Sam is in it we ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... Elizabeth Robinson did not go down in a typhoon, or from any other reason, or—the brothers Quick escaped. But here is a list of the men who were aboard when she sailed from Hong-Kong. She was, I have already told you, a low-down tramp steamer, evidently picking up a precarious living between one far Eastern port and another—a small vessel. Her list includes a master, or captain, and a crew of eighteen—I needn't trouble you with their names, except ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... was difficult for either Lydia or Kent to describe afterward. There was a hullabaloo that brought half the mothers of the neighborhood into the yard. The doctor was sent for. Margery was put to bed and Kent and Lydia were mentioned as murderers, low-down brats and coarse little brutes by Mrs. Marshall, who ended by ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the roll, I—I don't seem to have any friends." The schoolma'am was twirling the Montana sapphire ring which Weary had given her last spring, and her voice was trembly and made Happy Jack feel vaguely that he was a low-down cur and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... in that. We have to guard 'em at night. She ain't had no good word for any of us since she's been up there. Every time she looks at a feller she makes you feel like you was somethin' low-down—a snake, or somethin'." ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... bowling phenomena, wandered casually through a little door into what must always be termed the wrong end of a bowling alley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They were not only shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses were using the most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still, perfectly undaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and killed three of the best ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... you?" It was a mere statement which couldn't have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood. "That's all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that's all right, too. But what ain't all right is what your mother has set you on to thinking about me. You'd never have thought it yourself. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... been outside their own parish; men who know that the whole is greater than the part; men who are too wide awake to go on doing just what the Bandar-log tell them, and allow themselves to be used as stalking-horses for low-down political ramps! When we, going round in bath-chairs and on crutches, see that sight—well, I don't think we shall regret our missing arms and legs quite so much, Colonel. War is Hell, and all that; ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... shoving Old John roughly to one side as he dashed through the doorway and on into the room he had assigned to the sullen and bibulous stranger. "I knowed it! I knowed it!" he wailed, popping out again as if on springs. "He's gone, an' he's took our broncs with him, the measly, low-down dog! I knowed he wasn't no good! I could see it in his eye; an' he wasn't drunk, not by a darn sight. Go out an' see for yoreself if they ain't gone!" he snapped in reply to Old John's look. "Go on out, while ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... I'd jump you and stomp the gizzard out of you, you low-down, dried-up, whisker-faced, mutton-eatin' butcher, you! I goes to you and makes you a square offer and you come pussy-footin' in and steals me ranch when I ain't there! If Jack Corliss don't run you plumb off the edge afore to-morrow night, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... bit of it," demurred Ritchie. "No, sir. I said that if ever I found out who played that mean, low-down trick on Upton, the culprit or I would ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... her hands on her portly hips. "I hain't used to no such trash. When anybody has lived with the highest nobility they can't stomach such low down niggers. Why, I used to have 'em kneelin' at my feet, four or five at a time, askin' what I'd have for dinner. And that poor, iggorent, low-down cook in the kitchen told me jest now I lied about Prince Arthur, that there never wuz such a prince, and I sez to her, 'How any black nigger can stand makin' bakin' powder biscuit and tell such lies is ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... exclaimed, getting speech in these surroundings. "Kick! I deserve it. Of all the low-down, d——n cowards that ever was borned I sure am the worst! But the gall of that feller Peterson! An' him a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough



Words linked to "Low-down" :   funky, contemptible, inside information, miserable, low, jazz, emotional, scurvy, scummy, dope



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