Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Rakish   Listen
adjective
Rakish  adj.  Dissolute; lewd; debauched. "The arduous task of converting a rakish lover."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rakish" Quotes from Famous Books



... from short frocks, Frances Stuart had established herself as the pet par excellence of the Court of France. With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite; every gallant, from "Monsieur" to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called her "big sweetheart." So devoted was His Majesty to La belle Ecossaise that, when her ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... without first getting it '58, that Dr. Sevier, as one morning he approached his office, noticed with some grim amusement, standing among the brokers and speculators of Carondelet street, the baker, Reisen. He was earnestly conversing with and bending over a small, alert fellow, in a rakish beaver and very smart coat, with the blue flowers of modesty bunched ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... an old gentleman—tall, distinguished-looking, handsome, with a face full of character, the strong lines and features of which were further accentuated by his silvery hair. He was a smart old gentleman, too, well and scrupulously attired and groomed, and his blue bird's-eye necktie, worn at a rakish angle, gave him the air of something of a sporting man rather than of a follower of Thespis. His fellow members of the Oliver company seemed to pay him great attention, and at various points of the proceedings whispered questions to him as ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... told me yesterday that there was a very 'highfalutin' gintleman' in the camp the night before last. He came there in a long, rakish automobile. Uncle Mac said that 'he parted his whiskers in the middle, so he did,' and that 'he looked like a governor or somethin' of the sort.' I was just wondering if that detective of yours has anything to do with that ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... cloud of dust trailed a rakish, trim-lined, high-powered, purring Clagstone "Six" to a stop in front of the Occidental Hotel and Old Heck and Skinny Rawlins climbed glumly and stiffly from the front seat, after the thirty-minute, twenty-mile run from ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... Titian madonna. She came down and lay among great black and gold satin cushions, and lit a scented cigarette and opened a new French novel. Black and gold was her new scheme for her drawing-room; she had had it done this spring. It had a sort of opulent and rakish violence which suited her ripe magnificence, her splendid flesh tints, her brown eyes and corn-gold hair. Against it she looked like Messalina, and Gilbert like rather a decadent and cynical pope. The ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,—they don't think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks 'tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he's become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can't bear him to look at me. If he touches ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... all that Drury Lane affords Can paint the rakish "Charles" so well, Or give such life to "Mirabell" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... to his mouth and surreptitiously removed a chew of tobacco almost fresh. With some effort he pulled his feet closer together, and he lifted his old Stetson and reset it at a consciously rakish angle. He glanced at the car, behind it and in front, coming back to the depressed male individual before him. "Yes, ma'am, I'll get you out, all ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... to his hat, jerked the brim at a rakish angle over his eyes—and he sprawled himself out on a chair. He heard the Tocsin's voice at the front door, and a man's voice, low and guarded, answer her. Then the door closed, and their steps approached the room. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... ran back. They saw Dr. Stanley come out on the porch from his study. He was in his house gown and wore a little black cap to cover his bald spot. It was a little on one side and gave the good clergyman a decidedly rakish appearance. ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... turned to the window, and through the grey curtain of crepuscule recognised the rakish topsail schooner that had excited Molly's admiration some days before. He gazed forth upon it ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... for cant from you. I don't believe that God cares. Everything goes on by the almanac and natural law. The sun sets when the time comes, no matter who is belated. Girls that are sweet and loving and trusting, like Katy, have always been and will always be victims of rakish fools like Smith Westcott. I wish I were an Indian, and then I could be my own Providence. I would cut short his career, and make what David said about wicked men being cut off come true in this case, in the same way as ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... successful newspaper man whom I know has four different pipes and each serves a special purpose. When he wants to write a humorous article, he says to his wife, 'Where is my funny pipe?' and she hands him a long-handled affair with a weichsel-wood bowl and a cherry stem that has a kind of rakish, good-natured curve to it. Then he sits down and grinds out copy that will make an Englishman laugh at first sight. A big, dumpy brier, with a shorter stem and a celluloid end, is responsible for general descriptive work, sporting news, etc., while a trim little meerschaum with a carved bowl ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman

... he had first set eyes upon it. There were more automobiles; four of them altogether. At the wheel of each sat a soldier driver in grey uniform, and with a cloth covered helmet. Each car was of the same type, a long rakish grey body, low to the ground. As he neared the house an officer wearing a long, grey coat came out, accompanied by two or three younger men. He turned to speak to them, then got into one of the cars, which immediately drove off. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... A rakish little stern-wheel steamer lay in the stream, bound for Pittsburg, and sorely was Miselle tempted to take passage down the Alleghany in her; but lingering memories of home and the long-suffering Caleb at last prevailed, and, with a sigh, she turned her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... August morning as I drove along one of Delaware's flat, flat roads, to know what could possibly have produced the brilliant, blazing scarlet banner that hung across a distant wood as if a dozen red flags were being there displayed. Closer approach disclosed one rakish branch on a sugar maple, all afire with color, while every other leaf on the tree yet held the ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... the machine I stretches my neck around and takes a look at this wayside group. Three little girls are huddled panicky around this young party who wears a brown velvet tam at such a rakish angle on top of her wavy brown hair. And cuddled up in her left arm she's holdin' a chubby youngster whose face is ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... out a long rakish-looking craft that had come up out of the southwest. When it was reported to Officer Cleary and he had looked critically at the vessel for some time he declared finally that it was a destroyer, but yet too far off to hazard any guess as ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... up and wave towards the stranger. She was standing steadily to the southward, gradually edging in towards the land. Our hopes increased of cutting her off. We made her out to be a large topsail schooner—a rakish-looking craft. Nearer and nearer she drew. Still she came on so fast that we began to fear that we should not get sufficiently to the westward to be seen, for though we could make her out clearly, and could ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... an imported French racer. It had only two seats, open in front, with a rumble behind for the mechanic. It was long and low and rakish, a most wicked-looking object; whenever it stopped on the street a crowd gathered to stare at it. Oliver was clad in a black bearskin coat, covering his feet, and with cap and gloves to match; he wore goggles, pushed up over his forehead. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... the paternal pocket, with narrow enquiries, each Saturday night. But worst of all to know that because he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had no heart—no heart that he could offer where he laid it; but there it must lie, and be trodden on in silence, while rakish-looking popinjays—But this reflection stopped him, for it was too bitter to be thought out, and fetched down his quivering hand upon his axe. Enough that these things did not tend to a healthy condition of mind, or the proper worship of the British Constitution. However, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... stumbled up, handed Lynch his cap and disappeared without a word. Lynch stared mournfully at it. The emblem was crushed and the cap looked rather worn and useless. He put it on his head, where it assumed the rakish tilt of a hobo's favorite tam-o'-shanter, and said: "I hope you're not thinking of blaming me for ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... keep are long and well-furnished birds, as they always fly better, and lay more eggs than the short thick-set variety: they should have rakish-looking heads, with long bills, chrome yellow tinged with green in the case of the drake, and dull brown fringed with bright orange in the case of the duck. The eyes should be set high in the head, and the head ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates

... with the dignity of the office of those who wore them, degenerated towards the fifteenth century. So much was this the case, that an order of Francis I. forbad the judges from wearing pink "slashed hose" or other "rakish garments." ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... save for an iron-gray moustache which was cropped in a straight line from one corner of his mouth to another. His eyes were half hidden beneath shaggy brows. Across one cheek showed the red welt of an old sabre wound. There was a military air about him from his head to his feet; from the rakish angle to which his hat tumbled, to his square shoulders, braced far back even when the rest of his body fell limp, and to his feet which he moved as though avoiding the swing of a scabbard. A military cape slipped askew from his shoulders. All these details were indelibly ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... fire, his hands buried deep in his trouser pockets, his chin sunk upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon the glowing embers. For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little later a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a swagger lit his clay pipe at the lamp before descending into the street. "I'll be back some time, Watson," said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his campaign against Charles Augustus Milverton; but I little dreamed the strange ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it was that her former pretended lover had been recommended to, and she found means to have it insinuated to her by a woman-friend, that he was not only rakish and wicked, but, in short, that he had a particular illness, and went so far as to produce letters from him to a quack-doctor, for directions to him how to take his medicines, and afterwards a receipt for money for the cure; though both the letters and receipt also, as afterwards ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... miniature racing sled—his most prized possession—and a perfect reproduction of the one "Scotty" used in the Big Races, being built strongly, but on delicate lines. Danny pulled another, only a trifle less rakish, beside it. They were conversing in low tones. "We got pretty nearly half an hour t' wait, Dan, an' it's fierce t' have all these people that don't know a blame thing about racin' standin' round here ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... changed in appearance during the somewhat long interval since Verdant had last seen him, and his handsome features had assumed a more manly, though perhaps a more rakish look. He was lolling on a couch in the neglige attire of dressing-gown and slippers, with his pink striped shirt comfortably open at the neck. Lounging in an easy chair opposite to him was a gentleman clad in tartan-plaid, whose face might ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... delicate pale face A quizzical thin smile is showing, His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace, His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing. He wears a brilliant-hued cravat, A suit to match his soft gray hair, A rakish stick, a knowing hat, A manner ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... corner for his car a low, rakish roadster stopped before him. He heard a creaking of brakes and saw the back wheels of the machine lock as it came to a stop. He looked up. Gibson was at the wheel, Consuello at ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... thousand hairpins next time," she said angrily, as she fastened the coils to the best of her ability, and straightened the rakish hat. "You had better see that your hair is safe, Mollie, before you have your turn. I am going to sit down on the grass and jeer at you for a change. It's so easy to be superior when you ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... he wore a slashed dolman trimmed at throat, wrists and edges with fur; his breeches were buff; his boots finished at the top with a yellow cord forming a heart-shaped knot in front; at his heels trailed the most dainty and rakish of sabres, light, graceful, curved ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... the window and looked out at the whole panorama of the school that ran beneath him, from the long, rakish lines of the Upper, by Memorial Hall, to the chapel and the circle of Houses that ended at the rear with the Dickinson. Below, boys were streaking across the green depths like water-bugs over limpid surfaces, or hallooing joyfully ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... hopelessly corrupted thirties before ever I saw a copy. Even then, it did not lack interest. And one passage, at least, richly rewarded a glance through its pages. It seems that Elsie, arriving from somewhere, reached some city in the late evening. Her father (a rakish, devil-may-care fellow who thought it was all right for Elsie to play the piano on Sunday) met her at the station and engaged a cabriolet to take her across town to whatever shelter had been selected for the night. As they were bowling along one of the principal ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... and they all looked interesting and hard-used. One of the brothers had been to a party the night before, and on coming home had put his dress-tie about the neck of a little plaster bust of Byron that stood on the mantel. This head, with the tie at a rakish angle, drew Claude's attention more than anything else in the room, and for some reason instantly made him wish he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... in a far corner clashed with the first glimmer of dawn; and in the dimness Evelyn's face showed pale and indistinct, save for two dusky semicircles where her lashes rested on her cheek. Desmond saw all this, because at night the shade was discarded, though the rakish bandage still eclipsed his right eye. He lay lapped in a pleasant sense of the unreality of outward things, and his wife—dimly seen and motionless—had the air of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... of distinct objects surprise the Northern eye. Marseilles is always a picturesque city. No commercial town in the world can compare with it in this respect. On the water float the Mediterranean craft, rakish boats, with enormous latteen sails; long, low, sharp, black vessels, with a suspicious air redolent of smuggling and piracy. No tides rise and fall—advance and retreat. The waters are always ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... of the great dramatists of the generation before him) there is enough of the manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson kept up to hide, at first sight, the utter want of anything like their matter; and as one sickens at the rakish swagger and the artificial smartness of his coxcombs, one regrets the racy and unaffected blackguardism ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... you be?" he inquired, and a brown eye, rakish and roving in its glance, played briskly over the Parisian, whilst Garnache himself returned the compliment, and calmly surveyed this florid gentleman of middle height with the fair hair ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... she had first observed stopped near the horses' heads and peered intently at her from beneath a broad and rakish hat. He was tall and appeared to be more respectably clad than his fellows, although there was not one who looked as though he possessed a ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... themselves in my consciousness, but of course were utterly unintelligible to me. Before the creature had finished, a lash-like tentacle shot out from the chief of the nine and removed the menore; a moment later it reposed, at a rather rakish slant, on the shining ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... day were filled by echoes of the horns of the bloody chase—the cors de chasse of the legendary Roland and knights of the Nibelungen. Humble civilians grew fonder of the habit of donning their military or hunting uniforms and big marching boots, and sticking cock's feathers in their hats at rakish angles, recalling the war of 1870 or reviving dreams of the sporting Tyrol. They drank daily more pints of beer and swallowed the hot-headed Rhine wines as if thus renewing their blood in that of their fiery ancestors. Meals mounted to seven or eight a day, for it was ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... Buenaventura in Los Pasages, and the brig steamed out, still with the British colours at her peak Whilst the Carlist privateer was motionless in fancied security—there was some want of prudence or vigilance there, surely—the gun-brig crept down and overhauled her before alarm could be given, and the rakish schooner-yacht, the skimmer of the seas, had the humiliation of falling a prey to a wretched slow boat that she could laugh at with steam up in the open sea. The arrest was made in the usual manner, and the captors behaved with the customary naval courtesy. They were over-joyed at their good fortune, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... had he failed to subdue. That was Teddy, a rakish sorrel that had never yet been ridden. Many had tried it, but none had stuck to the saddle to the finish; and some had been carried from the corral ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... named Von Kragg. He was but two seats removed from Prince Ugo, while Savage was on the other side of the table, almost opposite Quentin. On Dickey's right sat the Duke Laselli, and next to that individual was the American millionaire. Directly across the broad table from Quentin was the tall rakish-looking Count Diego Sallaconi. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... and indiscreet mood of candour, that she had simply made the show. Others expressed the same thought in more words. Near the entrance stood Harry Burgess, patently expectant. He was flushed, and looked handsomely dandiacal and rakish as he rolled a cigarette in those quick fingers of his. He meant to explain to her that the happy idea of the wreath was ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... a deevil!" he told himself, giving his hat a rakish cock. "Ye're a deevil wi' the weemen, a ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... girl, though! said her rakish nephew, and swore a great oath: Dear aunt, forgive me, but I must kiss her; and was coming to me. And I said, Forbear, uncivil gentleman! I won't be used freely. Jackey, said my lady, sit down, and don't touch the creature—She's proud enough already. There's a great difference ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... voluptuousness &c n.; plunge into dissipation. revel; rake, live hard, run riot, sow one's wild oats; slake one's appetite, slake one's thirst; swill; pamper. Adj. intemperate, inabstinent^; sensual, self-indulgent; voluptuous, luxurious, licentious, wild, dissolute, rakish, fast, debauched. brutish, crapulous^, swinish, piggish. Paphian, Epicurean, Sybaritical; bred in the lap of luxury, nursed in the lap of luxury; indulged, pampered; full-fed, high-fed. Phr. being full of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... trussing you. Now, observe, I have left several of the points untied, of set purpose; and if it please you to let a small portion of your shirt be seen betwixt your doublet and the band of your upper stock, it will have so much the more rakish effect, and will attract you respect in Alsatia, where linen is something scarce. Now, I tie some of the points carefully asquint, for your ruffianly gallant never ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... in civilian clothes sat tilted back in one of several chairs beside the door. He wore a little black moustache and because his head was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his hat was pushed forward giving him a rakish look which was rather heightened by an unlighted cigar sticking up out of the corner of his mouth like a ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... bigger than this low, black, rakish craft if you are going to be a pirate in the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet whined off the sphere as if it were steel. Pember jerked his head in despair. Angrily he fired again. His tin hat slid to one side of his head at a rakish angle. ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... sombrero at a rakish angle, his eyes bright with enthusiasm supplied by that which he designated as a morning "bracer," and his long gray locks bobbed in the breeze as he swayed in the saddle and droned his cheerful epic ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... and was silent; but anon he asked again what I thought of a long, rakish-looking steamer lying some miles away on the starboard quarter, and when I ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... before the boats had rowed a mile from the ship, a thick haze surrounded the ship, and the chase was lost sight of. The rain fell in torrents, and the ship was going seven knots through the water. On the clearing up of the fog, the chase was again visible. The sun broke forth, and the rakish-looking brigantine appeared to have carried on all sail during the squall. They could see, under her sails, the low black hull pitching up and down; and, approaching within range, one of the forecastle guns ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... ten minutes past seven, the rakish recklessness of a quarter past, the drooping weariness of twenty-five minutes past, must ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... crashed into it breast on and were crushed by the crowd behind. In the van of the right-hand wing, brushing the rock with his shoulder, charged an enormous bull with tusks so large that the heavier had weighed down his head to a permanent rakish angle. He caught sight of me—trumpeted like a siren in the Channel fog—and came at me with raised ears and trunk outstretched. I heard shooting to the left, and more shots from the forest, where the very ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... hadn't come just when you did," he remarked solemnly, "I should have been devoured by sharks. Already I had noticed a black fin circling about the island—I mean a LEAN, black fin,—or is it a low, rakish, black fin? No; that's a craft,—a low, rakish, black craft. It ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... Council, and of which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a better schema, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly and sly, gave entrance to this treasury of dainties; and then what a rare array of disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... the South-east, and you behold on the same day, in 1620, a low rakish ship hastening from the tropics, solitary and alone, to the New World. What is she? She is freighted with the elements of unmixed evil. Hark! hear those rattling chains, hear that cry of despair and wail of anguish, as they die away in ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... man—and a queer kind of individual he was to look at—a rakish figure, about thirty, and of the middle size, dressed in a coat smartly cut, but threadbare, very tight pantaloons of blue stuff, tied at the ankles, dirty white stockings and thin shoes, like those of a dancing-master; his features ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... it up, shook it once or twice, and deliberately inserted it between his lips. And there he sat, round-eyed, silent, the end of the thermometer protruding at a rakish angle from the corner of his mouth. And he ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... the beginning of the mush-snow, a long team of rakish Malemutes, driven by an Athabasca French-Canadian, raced wildly into the clearing about the post. A series of yells, and the wild cracking of a thirty-foot caribou-gut whip, announced that the big change was at hand—that ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... yellow current, were the aliens of the blue seas, high-hulled, their tracery of masts and spars shimmering in the heat: a full-rigged ocean packet from Spain, a barque and brigantine from the West Indies, a rakish slaver from Africa with her water-line dry, discharged but yesterday of a teeming horror of freight. I looked again upon the familiar rows of trees which shaded the gravelled promenades where Nick had first seen Antoinette. Then we were under it, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... dozen other log cabins tucked away here and there among the foothills of the Bear Paws. It had an air of rakish hominess, as if it would be a fine, snuggy place in winter, when the snow and the wind swept the barren land around. In the summer, it stood open-doored and open-windowed, with all the litter of bachelor belongings scattered about or hanging from pegs on the wall outside. There was a faint trail ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... one see the hut of rough logs and clay that denotes the settler, only occasionally is there a station, or a mill or a logging camp in this womb of loneliness. Only occasionally does one cross one of those lengthy and rakish spider bridges that give a hint ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... while the reformer Merle awaited the calamity he had predicted, while Wilbur surrendered anew to infatuation for this intrepid soul that would dare any crime, while Ben Blunt rocked on spread feet, the glowing pennygrab cocked at a rakish angle, while, in short, vice was crowned and virtue abased, there rang upon the still air the other name of Ben Blunt in cold and fateful emphasis. The group stiffened with terror. Again the name sounded along those quiet aisles of the happy dead. The voice was one of authority—cool, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... enormous glasses framing round blue eyes, shadowed by a hat that was almost an exact counterpart of the shabby one Miss Gray had hung each morning for the past three winters on her peg in the dressing-room. But there was something about the rakish tilt of the hat that was in such strange contrast to the severe spectacles and the thin, frosty nose, that it gave the snowlady the appearance of staggering and ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... with the deliciously foolish bewilderment of the accomplished clown. After one or two failures, brilliantly improvised, he fixed it firmly on his head. The huge gauntlet, with its limp five fingers dangling over his left ear, became a rakish kepi with a five-pointed flap. Max—I mean Prosper Panne—wore it with an "air impayable." Out of his round, soft, putty-coloured face he made fifteen other faces in rapid succession, all incomparably absurd. He ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... was, I couldn't help laughing at the pen-and-ink sketch which accompanied it—a sketch of the duke, with crowned head, and breast covered with decorations, smiling fatuously from within a rakish border of broken ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... in the testiness of being so rudely roused, had pushed his nightcap very much on one side of his bald head. This gave him a rakish eccentric air which, now that he had leisure to observe it, charmed Mr Swiveller exceedingly; therefore, by way of propitiation, he expressed his hope that the gentleman was going to get up, and further that he would never do so ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... by the main companionway, was divided into three sections—a small lounging room, a wireless room, and the captain's cabin, over which stood the bridge and chart house. The single funnel rose between the captain's cabin and the wireless room, and had the rakish tilt of the racer. Wanderer II could upon occasion hit it up round twenty-one knots, for all her fifteen years. There was plenty of deck room fore ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... towards them, and between them a bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle, stepped defiantly. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... difficulty in running week in and week out without serious breaks and delays. To use a slang phrase, "They will not stand the racket." However "stunning" they look on asphalt and macadam with their low, rakish bodies, resplendent in red and polished brass, on country roads they are very frequently failures. A thirty horse-power foreign machine costing ten or twelve thousand dollars, accompanied by one or more expert mechanics, may make ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... person could do things, if he had to, thought Stubby. No use saying you couldn't, you could, if you had to. He was back in tune with life. He whistled; he turned up his collar in the old rakish way; he threw a stick at a cat. Back home he jumped over the fence instead of going in the gate—lately he had actually been using the gate. And he cried, "Get out of my sight, you cur!" in tones which, as Hero understood things, meant anything but ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... of his office opened and a young lady in a very stunning street dress, with a pretty little rakish hat and a tantalizing veil, stood a moment, hesitated, and then was about to turn back with an apology for intruding on ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... men. His hair curled in little rings of iron gray all over his round bullet head. As for his countenance, it was strongly marked, deeply pitted with the small-pox. For the rest, there was a fierce little squint out of one eye; the nose had a rakish twist to one side; while his large mouth, and great white teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry as it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... put this question he became aware of something very unusual in his wife's appearance. Alma was pallid and shaking; her small felt hat had got out of position, and her hair was disordered, giving her a wild, rakish aspect. He saw, too, that the horse dripped with sweat; that it glared, panted, trembled, and could not for a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... came thronging out of the road into the parlour certain fellows of the baser sort, and behind them came one who was not of that denomination—a fair young man with a fine face under an Alpine hat. Heeding nothing of this audience, the girl gave a little rakish toss of her head and called on ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... the rakish hat from her own head, crammed it down hard over the orange-wreathed brow and gave her strange ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... naturally feeling rakish after this, "I will tell you. Miss Pray had a brood of chickens come off unseasonably to-day, who desired particularly and above all things, having taken a general outlook on life, not to live. Under Miss Fray's directions I have been amusing myself with trying to defeat that purpose. I ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... watched as the huge mast dipped slowly backward, triangular sail and all, until it lay nearly flat on the deck. The boat slipped under the bridge with room to spare. On the other side, the mast slowly went up to its normal rakish position again, the sail filled, and wind and current bore the boat steadily ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... can see ourselves. Oh, holy poker! it's cruel the difference between us. Here's my forehead low and bumpy, and my little nose, scarcely any of it, and what there is turned right up to the sky; and my wide mouth, and my little eyes, and my hair just standing straight up as rakish as you please. And look at you, with your elegant features and your—oh, but it's genteel you are!—and I love you, Nora alannah; I love you, and am not ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... with her grey hair growing fluffier under a somewhat rakish hat, said with a smile ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... the seamen of the archipelago, the greatest navigators and the most enterprising tradesmen, and were, in times gone by, the greatest pirates as well. In fact, the harbor master at Makassar told us that the crews of many of the rakish looking sailing craft which were anchored in close proximity to the Negros were reformed buccaneers. Certainly they looked it. They may have reformed, but that did not prevent Captain Galvez from doubling ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... been dozing over a paper, a man of middle age, slim, athletic, with heavy mustache and imperial, just beginning to turn gray, with deep-set eyes under bushy brows, and a keen, shrewd face, rather deeply lined. There was a look of dissipation there, a shade of shabbiness about his clothes, a rakish cut to the entire personality that had caused Folsom to glance distrustfully at him more than once the previous afternoon, and to meet with coldness the tentatives permissible in fellow travelers. The stranger's morning had ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... her feet will never be lifted altogether from the ground till they are turned up in their last rest. But I wouldn't try, Josiah Allen, to imitate that roarin' and rakish set if I wuz in your place, you a member ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... pale-blue undershirt, white flannel trousers girt round the waist with a red silk handkerchief, very gaudy moccasins, and a rakish Panama hat with a ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... very still and unresisting, her hand to her lips, uttering no word, scarcely breathing. He waited. He gave her time. After a little while her fingers strayed to the crown of her limp, rakish panama. They found the single hat-pin and drew it out. He smiled as he pushed the hat away and then pressed her dark little head against his breast. Her blue eyes ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... figure was Feuerstein, of the German Theater stock company. He was tall and slender, and had large, handsome features. His coat was cut long over the shoulders and in at the waist to show his lines of strength and grace. He wore a pearl-gray soft hat with rakish brim, and it was set with suspicious carelessness upon bright blue, and seemed to blazon a fiery, sentimental nature. He strode along, intensely self-conscious, not in the way that causes awkwardness, but in the way that causes a swagger. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... been frowning as he greeted her, was almost appeased. She looked so charming in her very pale green dress with the artfully-brimmed hat that he also had looked proud and happy at her first appearance. But Toby had received a shock. Standing there in his dark tweed suit, with a rakish Trilby hat and a fascinating cane, he had felt a fit companion for any girl, and as he was shaven, and his square face was browned with the sun and the sea wind, he had been content. And then Sally, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... Trix opprobriously, and not as the mere statement of an obvious fact. She took off her hat, which flight had flung to a somewhat rakish angle, and blinked vigorously towards the trees. She was not going ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... like," she answered, looking up to smile absently at him. And she began to play a rakish little air which, composed by some rattle-brain at a cafe table, had lately skipped out of the Moulin Rouge to disport itself over Paris. She played it slowly, in the minor, with elfish pathos; while he leaned upon the piano, his eyes ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... the two branches the water way broadened out until it became quite a mile wide, forming as snug a little harbour as one need wish to see. And in this harbour, perfectly concealed from all prying eyes which might happen to pass up or down the river, lay a brig, a brigantine, and a schooner, three as rakish-looking craft as could well be met with. Their appearance alone was almost sufficient to condemn them; but a huge barracoon standing in a cleared space close at hand, and a crowd of blacks huddled together on the adjacent bank, apparently in course of shipment on board ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... his father a few years before. But M. Rubempre was bent on business, and the delightful scenery was an old story to him. They took a boat at a pier, and for an hour a negro pulled them about the harbor. There were quite a number of steamers in the port, long, low, and rakish craft, built expressly for speed, and some of them must have been knocked to pieces by the blockaders before the lapse of many weeks, though a considerable proportion of them succeeded in delivering their cargoes at Wilmington or ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic

... work to cut out and make up a hunting-shirt of dressed deer-skin, gayly fringed at the shoulders, with leggings of the same, fringed from hip to heel. He then made me a rakish raccoon-cap, with a flaunting tail to it; mounted me on his best horse; and I may say, without vanity, that I was one of the smartest fellows that figured on that occasion at the Pigeon Roost Fork of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... example is a rakish-looking lad just rising into manhood. Such young men are very much in demand and he would not have the slightest difficulty in obtaining employment, yet he is constantly out of work. When a boy he began by summoning the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... if they only knew what they did for them. The Doctor was so used to being well dressed, that he never asked why. That his wig always sat straight and even around his ample forehead, not facetiously poked to one side, nor assuming rakish airs, unsuited to clerical dignity, was entirely owing to Mrs. Katy Scudder. That his best broadcloth coat was not illustrated with shreds and patches, fluff and dust, and hanging in ungainly folds, was owing to the same. That his long silk stockings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... could only puff and gasp above her muffler, declare that she was choking, and fan herself with her muff. Choking or not, the eyes of the companions brightened as they looked at her, for the scarlet tam-o'-shanter was set at a rakish angle on the dark little head, and Peggy the invalid seemed to have made way for the Peggy of old, with dimpling cheeks and the light of ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... in velveteen; he had a rakish way of smoking a cigarette between his songs that was worth money in itself; he underlined his comic points so that the dullest numskull in Castel-le-Gachis had a notion when to laugh; and he handled his guitar in a manner worthy of himself. Indeed, his play with that instrument was as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Bowman's house in Kent, and is retiring thither for six weeks: I tell her she has lived so rakish a life, that she is obliged to go and take up. I hope you don't know any more of it, and that Major Montagu is not to cross the country to her. There—I think you can't commend me for this letter; it shall not even have the merit of being ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... read Prayers before them. For then those that are afraid of stretching their Mouths, and spoiling their soft Voice, will learn to Read with Clearness, Loudness, and Strength. Others that affect a rakish negligent Air by folding their Arms, and lolling on their Book, will be taught a decent Behaviour, and comely Erection of Body. Those that Read so fast as if impatient of their Work, may learn to speak deliberately. There is another ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... little old gentleman. With his brisk air, natty eye-glasses, cane and gloves, and other items of dress in the most correct taste, he was quite the old beau. His white hair was crispy, brushed back, and his snowy mustache had rather a rakish effect. ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... or a runaway horse was after you, could you get out of the way without upsetting, Colonel," asked the Doctor, with a twinkle in the eyes that were fixed on the rakish hat. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... ran up a small lugsail, and set his boat's head towards the stranger. She was black hulled, and with a rakish rig that gave her the appearance of being ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... was a mere sketch of a man, random, rakish, with head aslant and shifty eyes forever dropping away from a questioner's face. He abounded in inhuman angles and impossible lines. It seemed that he must have been rather dashingly done in the first place, then half obliterated and badly ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... indoors. The cabin wore an unwonted and a rakish air. The stools seemed to have tried to dance the lancers and have fallen out about the figure. Two were overturned. The unwashed dishes were tossed helter-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fashion ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... moment a hiccough was heard, and a rather fast and rakish-looking chap, named Stagger, spoke up. "How d'ye do, miss," he said politely to Efficiency, with a side glance out of his wicked old eye. "I'm a bit of a knut, and without the slightest trouble I can easily minimize the disadvantage that old reprobate Drift has been frightening you with. ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... state of violent excitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as if he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots, and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... thing the looters do when they enter a house is to snatch down the telephones and take them out to burn; for, as one rakish bandit explained, they were the talking-machines of the foreign devils and, if left, might reveal ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... softly, took off the curly-brimmed hat, looked at it, and put it on again at a more rakish angle than ever. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... a lace of faint mists along the creek and beyond, when John and Helen reached their bench (of course they went back there), and broken roundelays were croaking from a bayou up the stream, where rakish frogs held carnival in resentment of the lonesomeness. The air was still and close. Hundreds of fire-flies coquetted with the darkness amongst the trees across the water, glinting from unexpected spots, shading their little lanterns for a second to glow again from other shadows. The sky ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... to her, intent on some joke or other, by way of revenging the blow; but with a furious glance she reminded him that her mistress was looking on. This seemed to trouble him but little, for he replied with a rakish wink, as much as to say that no woman, not even a lady, disliked a little fun. To be sure, when folks are sweethearting, other people always like ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Anne, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a particularly rakish and disheveled appearance. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... early days of his sojourn at Plessis-les-Tours king Louis, not wishing to hold his drinking-bouts and give vent to his rakish propensities in his chateau, out of respect to her Majesty (a kingly delicacy which his successors have not possessed) became enamoured of a lady named Nicole Beaupertuys, who was, to tell the truth, wife of a citizen of the town. The husband ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the fete on a particular day, before London runs quite dry. His pledge of his word is notoriously inviolate. The Countess of Cressett—an extraordinary instance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play by her alliance with a rakish juvenile—declares she performs the part of hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood. Perfectly convincing. The more so (if you have the gossips' keen scent of a deduction) since Lord Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... adventures, as a boy will whistle after sundown in a wood. Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the time of his coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano's concerning the little wine-stained table in the corner between the rakish rubber plant and the framed palazzio della something on ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... Evidently she saw something there that interested her keenly. She hurried to the dressing room and in a moment emerged looking strangely unlike the Josie her friends knew. Her sandy hair was completely covered by a henna wig, bobbed and crimped. Her sedate sailor hat was cocked at a rakish angle and draped with a much-ornamented veil, and mirabile dictu! a lipstick had been freely and relentlessly applied to her honest mouth and her cheeks were touched up with a paint of purplish hue. Her sober Norfolk jacket was as much disguised as its wearer by a silly lace frill ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... at the village of Southborough. It bore, as I should guess, some pleasure party upon their return from Brighton or from Eastbourne. There were three gaily dressed women, all young and beautiful, one of them with a Peking spaniel upon her lap. With them were a rakish-looking elderly man and a young aristocrat, his eyeglass still in his eye, his cigarette burned down to the stub between the fingers of his begloved hand. Death must have come on them in an instant and fixed them as they sat. Save that the elderly man had at the last moment torn out his ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... town most of the piety is knocked out of a man. You stare at the houses, and they stare back at you dumbly. There is nothing pretentious or rakish about any of them; no matter how riotous a man's imagination might be, he could never conjure up a "wink" from a Boer house, though I have seen houses in other parts of the world that seemed to "cock an eye" at a passing traveller and invite him to ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... it. She was tolerably secure where she lay, and had the advantage of being able to get out again with less difficulty than if she had come into the harbour. We, however, went alongside. She was a rakish-looking craft, and there appeared to be a good many men on board. As we went up her side we saw a swarthy fellow with big whiskers standing to ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... these acquaintances was a Mr. Rumbald, a maltster (which was all I thought him then), who frequented the Mitre tavern, without Aldgate, where I went one day, dressed in one of my sober country suits, wearing my hat at a somewhat rakish cock, that I might seem to be a simple fellow ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... pulled at a scarlet handkerchief about his neck. Adams noticed that though he was stunted and anaemic in appearance, he wore his shabby overcoat with an almost rakish swagger. His mouth was filled with chewing-gum which he rolled aside in his cheek when ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... About one o'clock, a rakish-looking schooner made her appearance, which, from her manoeuvres, such as frequently altering her course, as if she wished to avoid us, we suspected to be a slave-vessel; we, therefore, made full sail in chase, and at three o'clock, had approached ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... back with gay ribands, taken from an old hat and refurbished, appeared at the windows; the old tin syrup cans, pasted over with dark green paper, were made to disgorge their mouldy stores and transform themselves into flower-pots holding scarlet geraniums; even the disreputable, rakish old rocking chair assumed a belated air of youth and respectability, wearing as it did a cushion of discreetly patterned chintz; and the packing-box table hid its deficiencies under a simple cloth. All these magic ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... of the brilliant two-hundred paces of the pavement nearest the market-place. She knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother could not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be among the people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the cinema: rakish-looking, unattractive louts they were. Yet she must ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... an unobtrusive brown-paper parcel to be carried under the arm; and, having paid for his bedroom, he went out at about eight o'clock, walking boldly through the streets—just as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch, dressed in blue serge and not in his best black coat—Mr. Dale dressed for the holidays, with a rakish go-as-you-please soft hat instead of the ceremonious hard-brimmed bowler, and not too proud to carry his bag and parcel ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... were many consolations. Did Twiddle say he was hard up? Welsh himself in an even more evil case. He narrated various unfortunate transactions connected with the turf and other pursuits, with regret, no doubt, and yet with a fine rakish defiance of destiny. Twiddel's face cleared, and he began to show something of the same gallant spirit. He brought out a tall bottle with a Celtic superscription; Welsh half filled his glass, poured in some water from ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... of larger and more powerful vessels of this design, being now in the position to contest every step that is made by Germany in this field. The type has also been embraced by the Russian military authorities. The Astra-Torres airship has a rakish appearance, and although the lines of the gas-bag are admitted to increase frictional resistance, this is regarded as a minor defect, especially when the many advantages of the invention are taken ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... partly covered the fashionable forehead, she had, like a native woman, arranged her hair in two long braids. Her hat, no longer the flat straw or the flaring, rose-laden bonnet of the city, was now simply a man's cavalry hat, and almost her only mark of coquetry was the rakish cockade which confined it at one side. Long, heavy-hooped earrings such as women at that time wore, and which heretofore I had never known her to employ, she now disported. Brown as her face was now becoming, ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... was soon enough at his ease to lie flat upon the ferry gunwale, his cheeks supported by his hands, and talk to W—— and the Doctor as if they were old friends. He was a dealer in nitroglycerin cartridges, he said, and pointed to a long, rakish-looking skiff hard by, which bore a red flag at its prow. "Ye see that? Thet there red flag? Well, thet's the law on us glysereen fellers—over five hundred poun's, two flags; un'er five hundred, one ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... that broke the stretch toward Guests. It was not often that motors of any distinction saw fit to travel into Bloomfield; the pike was not good enough. But this approaching car seemed to be one of some distinction—was long and rather rakish, had a deep sound to the exhaust as it started up the hill toward him. Idly he watched it. There were two passengers, a man and a woman, slouched well down in the seats. What could they be doing in the heat ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... was apparently very busy doing something with a piece of fishline and a pair of long-legged rubber boots. Captain Perez, swinging back and forth in the parlor rocker with the patch-work cushion, was puffing deliberately at a wooden pipe, the bowl of which was carved into the likeness of a very rakish damsel with a sailor's cap set upon the side of her once flaxen head. In response to his companion's remark he lazily turned his sunburned face toward the cane-seated ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... turned up, to be invested for his own especial praise and glory; and having done up his piety and humility, as he trusted, to the satisfaction of the parlor, he clapped his palm-leaf on his head, with a sort of rakish, free-and-easy air, and proceeded to the dominions of Aunt Chloe, with the intention of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... continued Hudson, ignoring the interruption. "Well, just at daybreak one morning, all of a sudden there was a rakish-looking craft on our weather-bow. Lets fly a nine-pounder across our forefoot, and was alongside before my men could tumble up from below. I got knocked into the sea by the boom and fell between the ships; and the pirate he got hold of me and poured hot grog down ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... top-hat a rakish tilt, the old gentleman ambled indoors, satisfied that he had dropped a guarded hint in a pleasant and ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... shadow of a mighty bridge I stepped into a very smart launch manned by sailors in overalls somewhat grimy, and, rising and falling to the surge of the broad river, we held away for a destroyer that lay grey and phantom-like, low, rakish, and with speed in every line of her. As we drew near, her narrow deck looked to my untutored eye a confused litter of guns, torpedo tubes, guy ropes, cables and windlasses. Howbeit, I clambered ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... well-fitting Fifth Avenue tweeds did not fit quite so perfectly—the coat bunched a little at the shoulders, the trousers were drawn a little higher until they lost their "set." His hat was pulled still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie, tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale's lips there was an ominous smile not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he had assumed, and the lines at the corners of his mouth were ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... his bright green coat, his faultless white vest, and sea-green tights, became rather the popular favourite. He seemed just rakish and gallant enough to fulfil the conditions ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... think! She hadn't yellow hair, and she couldn't possibly have behaved so badly. I have often heard my parents say significantly that they had no trouble with Kate! Before she was four, she was dancing a hornpipe in a sailor's jumper, a rakish little hat, and a diminutive pair of white ducks! Those ducks, marked "Kate Terry," were kept by mother for years as a precious relic, and are, I hope, still ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... taken the place of the buckskin in the West,—a riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was drawn tight upon her head and encased in the shielding confines of a cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something pink and soft and pretty. Barry wondered what it could ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... "Isn't he rakish?" But Poppy got no answer from the sonneteer. He had wheeled round from her, carried away in the triumph and rapture of the sestette. His steps marked the beat of the iambics, he turned on his heel at the end of every line. For the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... novels, ye Mauchline belles, Ye're safer at your spinning-wheel; Such witching books are baited hooks For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel; Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons, They make your youthful fancies reel; They heat your brains, and fire your veins, And then you're prey for ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... All he could learn with regard to the latter point was, that on the day following that on which it occurred, a pilot boat and several fishing vessels had fallen in with a large schooner of a very rakish appearance, under French colours, steering a course apparently with the intention of running between Shetland and ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... And Johnnie, just as he was leaning back, prepared to enjoy himself to the full, suddenly noted, and with a pang, that his host, shorn of his headgear, was far less attractive in appearance than when covered; did not seem the strange, rakish, picturesque, almost wild figure of a moment before, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... circumstances of distress, make any reflections, but what should be to your honour, and in abhorrence of such actions. I am so convinced of this, that by this rule I would judge of any man's heart in the world, better than by a thousand declarations and protestations. I do assure you, rakish as Jackey is, and freely as I doubt not that Lord Davers has formerly lived (for he has been a man of pleasure), they gave me, by their behaviour on these tender occasions, reason to think they had more virtue than not to be very ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... the Buford was a fair-sized, ocean-going steamer. The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle. She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft. She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide. You could stay ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee



Words linked to "Rakish" :   devil-may-care, spruce, spiffy, natty, snappy, rakishness



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com