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Shamefaced   Listen
adjective
Shamefaced  adj.  Easily confused or put out of countenance; diffident; bashful; modest. "Your shamefaced virtue shunned the people's prise." Note: Shamefaced was once shamefast, shamefacedness was shamefastness, like steadfast and steadfastness; but the ordinary manifestations of shame being by the face, have brought it to its present orthography.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shamefaced" Quotes from Famous Books



... I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present as stately an appearance, we will say, as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... beasts and he were in the same predicament, together holding the battlements of life against the blind and brutal madness of storm. Moreover, the herd had saved him. The debt was on his side. The caress which had been so traitorous grew honest and kind. With a shamefaced grin Pete shut his knife, and slipped it back into ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... remarks to the Little'un that she thinks she has met him before; in Auckland, probably. Either she is mistaken, or, the Little'un has forgotten, and is shamefaced. He blushes the colour of beet-root. His huge frame wobbles in confusion; and, awkwardly trying to shrink out of sight, as his bashful habit is, he steps backward, and plants a giant heel upon O'Gaygun's toe. That outraged ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... uttered the last word, another knock came at the door, and in answer to Stella's 'Come in!' David M'Taggart entered, looking rather shamefaced. In broad Scotch, which it will perhaps be best to spare English readers, he said, 'I'm sorry to trouble you, Miss Stella, but the leddy will not take no for an answer; she ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... himself, as may be said, overlooking the job; but the conclusion was that the Irishman had promised him a small amount for his help. When, however, the task was finished Tim came to the group, and while Hardman, with shamefaced expression, remained in the background, he said with that simplicity which any one would find hard ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... surrounds their sight A globe of circular light That with long beams the shamefaced night array'd; The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire With unexpressive notes, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... just as Andrew Malden was locking the doors for the night, that—with a small bundle thrown over his shoulder, shamefaced, discouraged, and so tired he could hardly walk another step—Job pushed in and sat down in the old rocker. The older man was surprised enough. What did it all mean? Job had soon told his story—the night ride, the robbery, the long walk back to the mine, the strange suspicion that had ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... doorway, then, with her halting step, the skin of her back wrinkled with anxiety, she crossed the room. For a moment she hesitated, then with shamefaced terror, slunk to Maggie, pressed up against her, and sat there huddled, staring at Grace with ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... and ditch, down the bank and up again. Several times he almost had her. She never for a moment ceased screeching—an operation which seemed to affect her wind not a particle. At the end of fifteen minutes the Indian gave up amid the delighted jeers of his comrades, and returned shamefaced and breathless to jump aboard the boat as we bumped against the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... a notion," Marcel laughed, in a boyish, half shamefaced fashion as he lit his pipe with a firebrand. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... jealous of the newcomer, and treated him with lofty scorn. When he caught Mrs. Moulton petting the Black Prince, who is a very affectionate fellow Richard fiercely resented it and sometimes refused to have anything to do with her for days afterward, but finally came around and made up in shamefaced fashion. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... was frightened by her father's severity. Never had he spoken to her in such a tone. Her confusion changed to apprehension, her color from scarlet to white. She sat dumb and shamefaced, unable to reply. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... night, and came out to breakfast with a queer, shamefaced aspect, yet with considerably less heaviness of foot than he had shown the night before. He ate heartily, as well he might, for the food was extremely appetizing. When he got up to go he stood still ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... to the other of the group of silent, shamefaced men. Puzzled, she turned again to the victor in the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... to continue giving. But it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good grace. The dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts—"troop of shamefaced ones," "you draw in your head like a tern," "you make your voice small like a whistle-pipe," "you beg like one delirious"; and the verb pongitai, "to look cross," is equipped with the pregnant rider, "as at the sight ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... including the office-holders and the prominent business men. They all had that self-important air which is inseparable from such shows and which denotes that the individual is feeling either like a great man or a fool. Then came the militia battalion, a rather shamefaced lot of young men who seemed to be painfully aware that they were not at all real heroes like the soldiers in the carriages, but merely make-believe imitations. The patriotic societies followed, genuine and non-genuine, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... with its reference to a goddess, alone suffices to show. Even the name "syphilis" itself, taken from a romantic poem in which Fracastorus sought a mythological origin for the disease, bears witness to the same fact. The romantic attitude is indeed as much out of date as that of hypocritical and shamefaced obscurantism. We need to face these diseases in the same simple, direct, and courageous way which has already been adopted successfully in the ease of smallpox, a disease which, of old, men thought analogous to syphilis ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... bit shamefaced at this obviously sincere praise. Generally speaking, he had honestly tried to deserve it; but with regard to this social-democrat, he knew quite well he had many times been lacking in justice. He remembered how often, when Wolf's turn came, he had ordered ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... politics, golf, and the evils of prohibition. To this group always belong the black-sheep husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home, when they come back shamefaced and scented ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... then in rapid succession three or four times. Then rolling triumphantly something between her thumb and forefinger, she turned to Lydia. The little operation had not taken the third of a moment, but the change in the girl's face was so great that Mrs. Mortimer was moved to hasty, half-shamefaced, half-defiant apology. "I was listening to you, Lydia! I was listening! But it's just the time of year when they lay their eggs, and I have to fight them. Last year my best furs and Ralph's dress suit were perfectly riddled! You ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... same moment Halvor entered, and the girls were so astonished that they left their kirtles lying in the chimney corner, and ran away in nothing but their petticoats. When they came in again they were so shamefaced that they hardly dared to look at Halvor, towards whom they had always been so proud ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... He was a thorough English sailor;—could do, as he owned to me in a shamefaced way, that was comical enough, "heverything as could be done with a rope aboard a ship." He had been several India voyages, where the nice work of seamanship is to be learned, which does not get into the mere "ferry-boat" trips ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... situation and was about to express them with the generous strength which was ever his custom when dealing with his son-in-law, checked himself abruptly. He stared at his old friend and business enemy, wondering if he could have heard aright. Hope began to creep back into Mr. Brewster's heart, like a shamefaced dog that has been away from home hunting for a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... on your face before Him in prayer?" "No," she would have answered, "I am not going to pray. I am not going to ask the Master to do anything for me at all. I am simply going to slip up behind Him when the crowd is thronging Him, and touch His garment. I have a shamefaced disease. I want as little attention as possible. Hence I am not going to say a single word ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... the sire, as shamefaced as a blind man's dog; because this great warrior, so ready to kill others, was like a child in the hands of his wife, a state of affairs to which soldiers are accustomed, because in them lies the strength and is found all the dull carnality ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more enduring safeguard—genius! Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful as it be, is long before it loses its instinctive Dorian modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to glory—genius, that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not the dung-hill. Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks to escape from the sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... the humble giant, shamefaced in the moonlight, tying his broken bridle reins back in their rings, and drawing the knots tight with his bronzed fingers that looked like the coupling-pins of a cart,—and then at the hunchback doubled up in his saddle. Maybe,—and my blood began to rise with it,—maybe when we looked close, the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... and terrible thing he had come to tell her, she had not given him, the man who loved her, and whose wife she was to be, one thought since their solemn, rather shamefaced, embrace. Yet now the knowledge that, however, much he disapproved, Mark would stand by her, gave her a wonderful feeling of security, of having left the open sea of life for a safe harbour—and that in spite of the terrible hours, perhaps ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... time trying to manoeuvre into position for a photograph of the beast. However, the attempt failed. We managed to dodge his rush. Then, after the excitement had died, we discovered the porter and the shotgun up a tree. He descended rather shamefaced. Nobody said anything about it. A half-hour later we came upon another rhinoceros. The beast was visible at some distance, and downhill. Nevertheless the porter moved a little nearer a tree. This was too much for Memba Sasa. All the rest of the afternoon he "ragged" that ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... reserves of strength that people who live on their "top notes" have not got. It goes on singing "Tipperary" as though it had no care in life and no interest in ideas or causes. And then the big moment comes and the great passion that has been kept in such shamefaced secrecy blazes out in deeds as glorious as any that were done on the plains of windy Troy. Turn to those stories of the winning of the V.C., and then ask yourself whether the nation whose sons are capable of this noble heroism ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... to put it on; [e] hold up your chin; [f] look in the lord's face; [g] keep hand and foot still; [h] don't spit or snot; [i] get rid of it quietly; [k] behave well. [l] When you go into the hall, [m] don't press up too high. [n] Don't be shamefaced. [o] Wherever you go, good manners make the man. [p] Reverence your betters, but treat all equally whom you don't know. [q] See that your hands are clean, and your knife sharp. [r] Let worthier men help themselves ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... it, no mauvaise honte, no dread of archdeacons. She would, as she declared to her husband, make her wail heard in the market-place if she did not get redress and justice. It might be very well for an unmarried young curate to be shamefaced in such matters; it might be all right that a snug rector, really in want of nothing, but still looking for better preferment, should carry on his affairs decently under the rose. But Mrs. Quiverful, with fourteen children, had given over being shamefaced and, in some ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... for a false maiden or a dead child. The nearest one can get to defining the poetic temper of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have in their songs something, I know not what, that is at once shamefaced and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... back, for I was intent upon my task; and if I had I should have had no satisfaction, for Tom had stayed behind, as he afterwards said, to look after old master's property; but I never believed that tale for several reasons, one being that Tom looked shamefaced and awkward as he said it, and circumstances afterwards tended to show that he ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... early days, despite miseries and hardships, were really, now they regard them dispassionately, the happiest of their lives. That is a lie. And everybody, even he who says it, secretly knows it to be a lie. Youth is not glorious; it is shamefaced. It is a time of self-searching and self-exacerbation. It is a horrible experience which everybody is glad to forget, and which nobody ever wants to repeat. It knows no zest. It is a time of spiritual unrest, a chafing of the soul. Youth is cruel, troubled, sensitive ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door—on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up—upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... over by the arroyo, we met Curly and the Littlest Girl walking in the moonlight. Curly was quiet. The Littlest Girl was tremulous, content. Curly, pausing as we approached, mumbled some shamefaced thanks. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... with his convictions: he was short, awkward, had a shock of flaxen hair, broad shoulders, thick lips, very thick overhanging white eyebrows, a wrinkled forehead, and a hostile, obstinately downcast, as it were shamefaced, expression in his eyes. His hair was always in a wild tangle and stood up in a shock which nothing could smooth. He was ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... his hand upon his heart, "only interests me as a lover." The whole motive of the play, which would have been meaningless to a mediaeval audience, is a compliment to the ladies. It is as if our author nets Mars with Venus, and presents the shamefaced god as an offering of flattery to the Queen and her Court. Campaspe is, in fact, the first romantic drama, not only the forerunner of Shakespeare, but a remote ancestor of Hernani and the 19th century French theatre. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... Blanc—and capable of nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they are perhaps too shamefaced to utter. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... the Trophy after the Battle.—A few hours after the battle, while the victors are getting breath and refreshing themselves, a shamefaced herald, bearing his sacred wand of office, presents himself. He is from the defeated army, and comes to ask a burial truce. This is the formal confession of defeat for which the victors have been waiting. It would be gross impiety to refuse the request; ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... liefer have sat there and seen all the plays to the end, for they seemed to him exceeding fair, and like to ravish the soul from the body; howbeit, being shamefaced, he knew not how to gainsay the brother, who took him by the hand, and led him through the press to the west front of the minster, where on the north side was a little door in a nook. So they went up ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... rule a broad fee? A small thing to have abbots kiss my hands? Lord of the earth! is this not worth a broken vow, which in any case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous, if I desired you before when you went torn and shamefaced through the mire, what shall I say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a crown, Isoult la Desiree!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la Desiree, la Moult-Desiree, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... packed up for Mr. Contarine; and it was not until he had paid for them that he bethought himself that he had spent all the money borrowed for his traveling expenses. Too proud, however, to give up his journey, and too shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend's liberality, he determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and good luck for the means of getting forward; and it is said that he actually set off on a tour of the Continent, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... often that Dolph showed such excitement, but he had good cause, and, when he saw Chad standing, shamefaced and bashful, in the middle of the floor, and Melissa joyously pointing her finger at him, he caught up the banjo from the bed and put it into the boy's hands. "Here, you ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... a shamefaced look, Alice and Clara came back, and Mr. Hardy read that famous sixth chapter of Ephesians, beginning, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord." Then in a brief but earnest prayer he asked God's help and blessing on all the day, and rose to ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... If the shamefaced uneasy man to whom this remark was addressed could have found words to utter the thought that even in his confusion struggled uppermost in his mind, he would, looking at the bold, dark eyes that questioned him, have denied the fact. But he only stammered, "Yes." The ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... sizes, ages, kinds, and conditions of men—the shamefaced boy in the bud of his youth, showing by the way he begged that the humiliation of the situation had not yet worn off, and poor old creatures tottering on the brink of the grave, with nothing left in life but the enjoyment of beer and tobacco. There were ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... were shamefaced and contrite. They recognized their error, and were the more grieved inasmuch as they saw how the check had affected their brave young General. They heard, too, that the French were full of triumphant rejoicings; that they declared this repulse to be the end of the English attempt ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... speech. I have never seen the House with more than a score or two of members when a Scotch question is under discussion, and on the rare occasions on which a Southron does dare to intrude upon the sacred domain, it is with the most shamefaced looks. And so Sir George Trevelyan and his Scotch friends were allowed to have their nice little tea-party without any interruption, and the Bill got very nicely through. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... the I.G. could do nothing but resign himself to his fate. Baronet and coolie made a triumphal progress down Legation Street, much to the amusement of the sentries on guard, and by the time he reached his own door the former felt a few shamefaced doubts about the advisability of mission methods which inculcated the equality of man irrespective of colour, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... by the Gypsy boy's shamefaced look, that there was nothing wonderful about it at all. Roberto had been able to speak all the time, but he did not wish to. Now, in his excitement, he had ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... graduating from the "Tech"? If possible, he wanted a very young man—he wanted the enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the plus-strength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals and remarked practically nothing else. There was no need. They were so proud and so glad that it was almost too much for the boy who had been a ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... I kept up no correspondence, the memory of this episode remained firmly imprinted on my mind. Two years later, while making a rapid journey through the old district, I once more visited Friederike: the poor child approached me utterly shamefaced. Her oboist was still her lover, and though his position rendered marriage impossible, the unfortunate young woman had become a mother. I have heard nothing more ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... and everyone looked awed and shamefaced as Mr. Clapper, the headmaster, strode into the midst of them. He had heard the noise of the fight, and had stolen up unobserved just in time to see Peter get ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... piratical submarine adventure took place a few days after the armistice, when a mournful procession of shamefaced-looking U-boats sailed between lines of English cruisers to be handed over to the tender mercies ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... dram together in a stall removed from the congregation of steaming men at the long bar. And when the maid had fetched the bottle, Tom Bull raised it, regarded it doubtfully, cocked his head, looked my shamefaced uncle in the eye. ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... into the kitchen. She had a shamefaced and resolute expression. Flora was in there, and her ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... were surveying the long dinner tables at the table d'hote with something of the uncomfortable and shamefaced loneliness of the provincial, Phoebe uttered a slight cry and clutched her father's arm. Mr. Hopkins stayed the play of his squared elbows and glanced inquiringly at his daughter's face. There was a pretty animation in it, as she pointed to a figure that ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... deep in reminiscence was she, she thought Captain Darby himself had surprised her; then, recognizing Abe and recalling that Samuel's winter visits were invariably paid in the afternoon, she broke into a shamefaced laugh. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... love." Then through her grace they all arose like people waking from sleep. They were alive, and their love was gone. While all the people there rejoiced at what had happened. Lotus-lake went home, bending his head in shame. And the merchant took his shamefaced daughter and her husband and went into the house ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown

... true that as time went on this link strengthened, for Ellen developed a brusque liking for her niece, even a shamefaced and unacknowledged respect. Notwithstanding this, however, the fundamentals that guided the actions of the two remained as divergent as before, and beyond discussions concerning garden and home, a few anecdotes relating to the past, and a crisp and not too delicate jest when the elder ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... though untrained. But he only sang Tubal Cain, Simon the Cellarer, and one or two others of that sort, of which the music was not forthcoming. At last, however, Julia Gould, who was the pianist, found John Peel, which he knew, and he found himself standing by that young lady, confused and shamefaced, trying to make his voice master a great lump there seemed to be in his throat. To make it worse the hubbub of voices ceased at the first notes, though it had swelled the louder during previous performances. All the men began marking the time with heads and hands, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... at last recognize in him their long lost eldest son. Though his stepmother Agnes is in a rage about his trick, he claims his rights as son and heir, and the bride of course is not loth to choose {367} between the two brothers. Kezul the matchmaker retires shamefaced, and when Wenzel shows himself in the last scene as a dancing-bear, and stammeringly assures the laughing public, that they need not be afraid of him, as he is "not a bear but only Wenzel", the final blow is dealt whereby he loses all favour in the eyes of Kruschina, who is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... only succeeded this time, just this once. Twice my landlady had asked me with her eyes for payment, and I was obliged to hang my head and slink past her with a shamefaced air. I could not do it again: the very next time I met those eyes I would give warning and account for myself honestly. Well, any way, things could not ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... shamefaced, and she thought she saw a gleam of remorse and also of relief in his eye. She went into the other room. She had not shown him ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... carrying her in his left arm, butted in among the crew like an infuriated bull. Some of the men, shamefaced, made way for them. Hosier reached her. She thought he said to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... "Sun's" naphtha-launch gave his cherished pipe to a sailor on a Spanish vessel who had none, and when one of his mates remonstrated with him, saying, "You're not going to give him your own brier-wood pipe!" he replied, with a shamefaced smile: "Yes, poor devil! he can't get one away out here. ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... Sir 41:16 Therefore be shamefaced according to my word: for it is not good to retain all shamefacedness; neither is it altogether approved ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... Priscilla, she is smiling too, but in a shamefaced fashion, and is blushing a warm pretty crimson, such as a girl of seventeen might be guilty of, listening to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... him because she was aware that she herself had been imprudent. Since he had discovered her interference at Silverbridge, and had made her understand its pernicious results, she had been,—not, perhaps, shamefaced, for that word describes a condition to which hardly any series of misfortunes could have reduced the Duchess of Omnium,—but inclined to quiescence by feelings of penitence. She was less disposed than heretofore to attack him with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... Edwin Clayhanger, shamefaced, looked at Hilda wistfully, as if in apology, as if appealing to her clemency against her fierceness; ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... said Will o' th' Green. "Every one is judged here in fairness. These men," pointing to the shamefaced, miserable foresters, "were caught in the doing of an evil deed, and so were dealt with summarily. But this one did not seem to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... bedside, Ned, and sit down; my voice is not strong and it fatigues me to speak loud. And now," he went on, when Ned with a shamefaced expression had seated himself by the bedside, "this desire that your mother tells me of to fight against the Spaniards for a time in the service of the Prince of Orange, how did ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... and reigneth in my thought, That built its seat within my captive breast; Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought, Oft in my face he doth his banner rest. She, that me taught to love, and suffer pain; My doubtful hope, and eke my hot desire With shamefaced cloak to shadow and restrain, Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire. And coward love then to the heart apace Taketh his flight; whereas he lurks, and plains His purpose lost, and dare not show his face. For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... to be hundreds of people in the room, nudging one another, waiting agape for him to do something idiotic; a well-advertised fool on parade. He stalked about, now shamefaced, now bursting out with a belligerent, "Aw, rats! I'll show 'em!" now plaintively beseeching, "I don't suppose I am helping Frazer, but it makes me so darn sore when nobody stands up for him—and he teaches stuff they need so much here. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... their helms and shouted thrice; and then fled rapidly, for the gates opened behind me, and there was the abbess herself, with her cheeks red, and her eyes burning bright in anger, as I thought, while behind her peeped all her nuns at the crowded street, and at myself standing shamefaced on the steps, doffing my helm as I ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... dwelt near each other from infancy. They had been playmates, and for many years were as brother and sister to each other. Erling's affection had gradually grown into a stronger passion, but he never mentioned the fact to anyone, being exceedingly shamefaced and shy in regard to love. He would have given his ears to have known that his love was returned, but he dared not to ask. He was very stupid on this point. In regard to other things he was sharp-witted above his fellows. None knew better than he how to guide the "warship" ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... surprised to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the other. Drumsheugh would even send his men to road-making, and apologise to the neighbours—"juist reddin' up aboot the doors"—while Saunders the foreman and his staff laboured in a shamefaced manner like grown-ups playing at a children's game. Hillocks used to talk vaguely about going to see a married sister in Glasgow, and one year got as far as Kildrummie, where he met Piggie Walker, and returned to have a deal in potatoes with that enterprising man. More than once Drumsheugh—but ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... for he is bragging all over the town how he put one over on you, and that you're on the loose somewhere, worse than ever, too shamefaced to show up in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... white gamboling lambs, playful as pups, and so ridiculously innocent looking!—didn't they call their Lord Agnus Dei, Lamb of God?—and gentle ewes and young truculent rams, like red-headed schoolboys, eager for a fray, and shamefaced wethers.... And by their thousands and their tens of thousands they drove them into Buenos Aires, and slew them for ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... Bolton was so discoursing, I wonder how many thousands of thoughts passed through Fanny's mind, and what dear times, sad struggles, lonely griefs, and subsequent shamefaced consolations were recalled to her? What pangs had the poor little thing, as she thought how much she had loved him, and that she loved him no more? There he stood, about whom she was going to die ten months since, dandified, supercilious, with a black crape to his white hat, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Ann sobbed aloud and wrung her hands, crying: "But he cast me off, sold me for gold and silver. Can I, whom he has flung into the dust, seek to go after him? Would it beseem an honest and shamefaced maid if I called him back to me? He is happy—and he will still be happy for many long, long years amid his reckless companions; if the time should ever come of which you speak, most worshipful lady, even then he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... you could," Buck snorted, then grinned at his prisoner in a shamefaced way: "You're ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... midst of this crowd of beggars and shamefaced creatures some lordly carriage passed from time to time containing a Fox, or a thieving Magpie, or some other ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... up if she would," said Jim valiantly. Then he added in a shamefaced sort of way, "you see, when I do give it up for a bit, she has it, and the smell and everything—well, I want ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... I should have liked it—very much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate. Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree disconcerting ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens

... to you," said the man, presently, with something of a shamefaced air, "about the little scene ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the next morning. To his ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... Somewhat shamefaced at this sudden honour, Mr. Stockton turned to the poet. "You're all coming home with me, aren't you?" he said. "I got your telegram this morning. We'd ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... cried the reckless woman. "Let me bring her here. If she's too shamefaced to own the truth, look at her—that's all I ask—look at her, and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... hands, and Sir John walked feebly to the stiff-backed chair, where he sat down in shamefaced silence. He was ashamed of his infirmities. His was the instinct of the dog that goes away into some hidden corner ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... taken in earnest, slunk away to the rear of the crowd, and it seemed as though the girl would remain unsold. Then it was that a ragged, out-at-heel weaver of diminutive size slowly elbowed his way to the front, and, holding up six pennies, said, with a shamefaced look on his face: "There's thy brass. ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... of confidence was interrupted by the return of Hal, who gazed eagerly, though in a shamefaced way, at the guest as he set down a bowl of ewe milk. She was a well-grown girl of ten, slender, and bearing herself like one high bred and well trained in deportment; and her face was delicately tinted on an olive skin, with fine marked eyebrows, and dark ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... short with "Excuse me, Mr. Van Buren; I can't listen to such abuse of one whom I esteem as highly as I do Judge Markham. Why, sir, he is head and shoulders above you, in sense and intellect and everything which makes a man," and with a haughty bow, Melinda swept away, leaving the shamefaced Frank alone ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... those devilish flames!" remarked Merriton, as a rather shamefaced explanation. Then he fairly heard the wires jump with the ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... business matters in Prince Edward Island; and becoming annoyed at Plaisted's equivocal answers, Mr. Sherwood took the copy of the letter Dexie had brought home with her, and laid it before his eyes. Plaisted read it with a puzzled brow and shamefaced cheeks. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... will be understood in the end (13); neither say, 'When I have leisure I will study'; perchance thou wilt have no leisure." 6. He used to say, "An empty-headed man cannot be a sin-fearing man, nor can an ignorant person (14) be pious, nor can a shamefaced man (15) learn, nor a passionate man (16) teach, nor can one who is engaged overmuch in business grow wise (17). In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man" (18). 7. Moreover, he once saw a skull floating on the surface of the ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text

... stood up and drew nigh, and stood there, all shamefaced and confused, looking on those twain, and wondering at the beauty of the Lady. As for the man, who was slim, and black-haired, and straight-featured, for all his goodliness Walter accounted him little, and nowise ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... shy to sing them to older people. They were all supposed to be liturgical tunes, or at least some "hop" for the Day of the Rejoicing of the Law. When I hailed the newly composed air with warm approval he would show his satisfaction either with shamefaced reserve or with ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... not be made of that good wife's and mother's sentiments any more than of the good First Emperor William's tears, shed so abundantly after every battle, by letter, telegram, and otherwise, during the course of the same war, before a dumb and shamefaced continent. These were merely the expressions of the simplicity of a nation which more than any other has a tendency to run into the grotesque. There is ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... came back in a few minutes and handed the two sovereigns over to Ernest, he did it with such an unblushing face as might have won him applause on any stage for its perfect naturalness. 'Lor' bless your 'eart, sir,' he said in answer to Ernest's shamefaced thanks, touching the place where his hat ought to be mechanically, 'it ain't nothing, sir, that ain't. If it weren't for the dookal families of England, sir, it's my belief the pawnbrokin' business wouldn't be worth mentioning ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a very drooping and shamefaced condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling in the consciousness of a mission, and a boyish certainty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... terrified Hoffmann of Berlin, suddenly spoke as if some spring had been touched, "You see here, gentlemen, something that God can never see through all eternity, that is to say, your like. God has not His like." And out you went, too shamefaced to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States—our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of sex—is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern psychologists ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... passing in the regenerating sunlight of what one might call a spiritual paganism, which conceives of natural forces and natural laws as inherently pure and mysteriously sacred. Thus the way of a man with a maid is no longer a shamefaced affair, but it is more and more realized that in its romance and its multifarious refinements of development are the "law and the prophets," the "eternal meanings" of natural ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... you'll say, your tongue said nothing. No, I warrant it: your tongue was wiser; your tongue was better bred; your tongue kept its own counsel: nay, I'll say that for you, your tongue said nothing.—Well, such a shamefaced couple did I never see, days o'my life! so 'fraid of one another; such ado to bring you to the business! Well, if this job were well over, if ever I lose my pains again with an aukward couple, let me be painted in the sign-post ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... Sunday; on which, after divine service (which they could hardly persuade Jack to read, so shamefaced was he; and as for preaching after it, he would not hear of such a thing), Amyas read aloud, according to custom, the articles of their agreement; and then seeing abreast of them a sloping beach with a shoot of clear water running into the sea, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... was a speculation which had, more than once, occupied Ethel, and when she had satisfied herself that her father was at ease, she began to study it, as soon as a shamefaced consciousness would allow her, after Alan's warm ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge



Words linked to "Shamefaced" :   guilty, shamefacedness, shamed, hangdog, modest, ashamed



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