Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Shapely   Listen
adjective
Shapely  adj.  (compar. shapelier; superl. shapeliest)  
1.
Well-formed; having a regular shape; comely; symmetrical. "Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, The spiry fir and shapely box adorn." "Where the shapely column stood."
2.
Fit; suitable. (Obs.) "Shaply for to be an alderman."






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





"Shapely" Quotes from Famous Books



... gazed at her small, slim figure reclining in the deck chair. Her long, gray robe parted by design, I have no doubt, to display her shapely, satin-sheathed legs. Her black hair was coiled in a heavy knot at the back of her neck; her carmine lips were parted with a mocking, alluring smile. The exotic perfume of ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... him she would wed and none else. And when her father saw how resolute she was, he gave a formal consent in their fashion, that she should marry whom she list and when she list. The lady was so tall and muscular, so stout and shapely withal, that she was almost like a giantess. She had distributed her challenges over all the kingdoms, declaring that whosoever should come to try a fall with her, it should be on these conditions, viz., that if ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... considered grand in any forest. The patriarchs are five in number, and are undoubtedly as old as the Christian Era, if not the Age of Solomon. The cypresses in the Garden of Montezuma, at Chapultepec, are even older and grander trees, but they are as entire and shapely as ever, whereas these are gnarled and twisted into wonderful forms by the storms of twenty centuries, and shivered in some places by lightning. The hoary father of them all, nine feet in diameter, stands in the centre of the grove, on a little knoll, and spreads ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... actor who personated Osmyn. This was a young man named Bury, of respectable parentage and education, it was said, and considerable reputation, though his aspiring buskin had never yet trod the London boards. He was a handsome, shapely person, with an assured, dashing manner, and a great amount of spirit and fire, which usually passed with his audience, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... would have ruined any other woman, but which only enhanced the piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,—tied the strings, letting the blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind, jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a "So long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and fluttered away in her short brown ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... damsel in richest raiment robed, a maid spear-straight of stature and five feet tall; budding of bosom with eyes large and black as by Kohl traced, and dewy lips sweeter than syrup or the sherbet one sips, a virginette smooth cheeked and shapely faced, whose slender waist with massive hips was engraced; a form more pleasing than branchlet waving upon the top-most trees, and a voice softer and gentler than the morning breeze, even as saith one of those who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... was one who did honour to the body he belonged to. Though not so tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and he had a power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the exigencies of his profession. He had not a rap of money in the world; yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely. The world said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship, and that, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully,-she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed conditions,"—hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... tragedy: Dressed in a garb to look like service clothes, Cheeks lit by fire—of make-up box, He marches with a squad of sallow youths And bare-kneed girls, Keeping step to tattoo of the drums Beat by some shapely maids in tights, While close by in the silent streets There march long files of purposed men Who go to death, perhaps, For the same cause he travesties Within the ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... flowers, and the graceful way in which he rides his horse. By his side is his servant, the Yeoman, "clad in cote and hood of grene," with a sheaf of arrows at his belt. We may even note his cropped head and his horn suspended from green belt. We next catch sight of a Nun's gracefully pleated wimple, shapely nose, small mouth, "eyes greye as glas," well-made cloak, coral beads, and brooch of gold. She is attended by a second Nun and three Priests. The Monk is a ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... a new, but graphic, expression to him; and he often remembered it afterward, and how quaintly it fell from her lips as she stood there in the light of the kerosene lamp, slim, self-possessed, in her faded gingham gown and apron, the shapely middle finger of one little weather-tanned hand resting on the edge ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers

... Horsengem, now corrupted to Horsingham, of which illustrious family you are, of course, aware yours is a younger branch. It is curious that the distinguishing mark of the race should have been preserved in all its shapely beauty," added Frank, with the gravest face possible, and glancing at the lavender kids, "through so many changes and so ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... caught a glint of corn flower blue eyes beneath long lashes, and a woman would have deduced from their color the correct explanation of a blue sunshade, a blue straw hat, and a light cape of Myosotis blue silk that fell from shapely shoulders over a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... But, alas! after an hour's search for adventure, I had encountered nothing, and I accordingly waxed courageous, and crept into one of these leafy, thorny caverns, and found myself shortly standing under a canopy of foliage that was held above my head fully a hundred feet by the shapely and towering stems of the royal mvule. Who can imagine the position? A smooth lawn-like glade; a dense and awful growth of impenetrable jungle around us; those stately natural pillars—a glorious phalanx of royal trees, bearing at such sublime heights vivid green ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... Arnold received the intelligence. It came in a vague, grey, monitory form, a cloud, a portent, a chill menace; but it came, and he paled under it. He seemed to lean upon his own hands, pressed one on each side of him to the seat of the sofa for support, and he looked in fixed silence at the shapely white thing on his knee. His face seemed to wither, new lines came upon it as the impression grew in him, and the glamour faded out of hers as she was sharply reminded, looking at him, that he had not traversed the waste with her, that she had kept her vigils alone. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... was a man of many punctilious habitudes, who wore cloth instead of buckskin, however hard it might be to come by, and silver knee-buckles and well-knit hose on his still shapely calves, and a peruke carefully powdered and tended. He had a keen, wrinkled, bloodless face, discerning, clever, gray eyes, heavy, overhanging, grizzled eyebrows, and a gentlemanly mouth of a ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... overcome, and Auntie Jinit declared it jist garred her greet to look at the bairn, she did it jist too well. And Miss Hillary turned to Miss Gordon and said, "She will make a great actress some day, perhaps," and Miss Gordon held up her shapely hands in horror and answered: "An actress! I'd rather see her in ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... gratified and annoyed. It might have passed for a discriminating and truthful criticism of the performance, which was a classical burlesque, wherein the star displayed an unconventional frankness of shapely limbs and unrestrained gestures and glances; but he applauded the more dubious parts equally with the audience. He was evidently familiar with the performance, for a look of eager expectation greeted most of the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... a decidedly graceful and pretty woman. The rounded curves of her shapely figure were set off to advantage by her riding-costume. Her eyes were especially attractive, greenish-grey eyes fringed by long black lashes under curved dark brows contrasting with the warm auburn tint of the hair that showed under her sunhat. Her complexion was dazzlingly ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... was only sixty-four years old, and did not look his age. His eyes were bright, his smile benevolent and charming, and his hands small and still shapely. He was habitually attired in black with a gold chain in his buttonhole from which hung three crosses, the Legion of Honour, the Iron Crown, and his Order of Westphalia created by him in imitation of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... "There is much more to be said. You shall render yet an account of your treason, and I am afraid, my poor rebel, that your comely head will part company with your shapely body. You and I will meet at Toulouse. What more is to be said will be said in the ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before the boy's eyes—a splendid hand, massive and corded at the base, running out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... tinge, while the surface is ornamented with numerous minute brownish scales which are scattered over a large part of the cap, but crowded or conjoined at the center into a large circular patch. This gives to the plant with its shapely form a beautiful appearance. In the young stage the entire surface of the pileus is quite evenly brown. As it expands the outer brown portion is torn asunder into numerous scales because the surface threads composing this brown layer cease to grow. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... stretch their long shadows across the land the Indians urge their horses down a steep, winding trail and arrive at the river's bank. Here they ford, follow the course of the stream for a while, and then at a bend reach an open flat dotted here and there with shapely live-oaks. In this park-like opening the long straggling ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... in his horse, and lifted his hat ceremoniously. He has an extremely shapely head, but I did not show that the sight of it melted in the least the ice of my resolve; whereupon we talked, not very freely at first,—men are so stiff when they consider themselves injured. However, silence is even more embarrassing than conversation, ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... approached them, intercepted the sound. All four of the persons seemed, in various ways, to experience the most violent feelings. The young man more than once moved as if about to start forward, yet did not advance; his companion, a small, very shapely woman, clung to him excitedly and pleadingly. The older man shook a stout cane at the younger, talking furiously as he did so. He held the elderly lady to him with his arm thrown about her, while she now cast her hands ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular orator ascend the pulpit. He was in full dress—white waistcoat, white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... walked up the hill to visit Mother Bab she went eagerly and with an unusual light in her eyes—she had transformed her schoolgirl braid into the coiffure of a woman! The golden hair was parted in the middle, twisted into a shapely knot in the nape of her neck, and the effect ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... buffets, besides the shapely cubes, free Welsh Rabbit started at four every afternoon, to lead the tired businessman in by the nose; or a smear of Canadian Snappy out of a pure white porcelain pot in the classy places, on a Bent's ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in place. The feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... that was the stranger's name) was, as already hinted, a tall, dark-complexioned man, as yet slightly on the sunny side of thirty, with a straight nose, firm, shapely mouth, which was neither sensual nor over-sensitive, and a pair of clear dark-brown eyes, in which there was a gleam of fervor, showing that he was not altogether incapable of enthusiasm. But for all that, the total ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... poor creatures have a respite, and may clothe ourselves in white garments; loose, soft, and in some degree shapely; but in the winter—the sombre winter, the depressing winter, the cheerless winter, when white clothes and bright colors are especially needed to brighten our spirits and lift them up—we all conform to the prevailing insanity, and go about in dreary black, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... glances, which dreaded to be caught, and for the most part her eyes were down on the drawing and on the hands busied with it. Hands, we know, tell of character; and Esther's eyes rested with secret pleasure on the shapely fingers, which in their manly strength and skilful agility corresponded so well to what she knew of their possessor. The fingers worked on, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... had been a scarcity of water, but they had had a good summer, thanks be to God, and he thought he had never seen the country looking so beautiful. And he loved this country, this poor Western plain with shapely mountains enclosing the horizon. Ponies were feeding between the whins, and they raised their shaggy heads to watch the car passing. In the distance cattle were grazing, whisking the flies away. How beautiful was everything—the white clouds hanging in the blue sky, and the trees! There were some ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... with fine, shapely prows as they dart over the smooth waters of the bays and rivers, these canoes present a picture ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... nearer, until at last she stood opposite the window. He could see the blue veins branching across her temples, the quick rise and fall of her bosom, caused by rather violent exertion, the wavy outlines of light brown hair that was gathered in a Greek coil at the back of the shapely head. She had the rare combination of dark eyes and light hair which made the lustre of her eyes all the more striking. He never forgot that moment as she stood panting before him on the gravel walk, her girlhood's grace blending so harmoniously with her budding womanhood. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... possessed a head well stocked with brains and a face that, if rather broad and short, was furnished by way of compensation with a long and narrow nose. If the present world can show nothing quite like him, it at least cannot produce anything more shapely in the way of the 'human form divine'. Apart from the Cro-Magnons, the remains of an old woman and a youth found at the lowest level of the Grotte des Enfants at Mentone are usually held to belong to a distinct ...
— Progress and History • Various

... on a full oval face and throat guileless of fleck or stain, smooth as a child's and glowing with health; on large dark eyes, no longer sunk in their orbits, but filled with an eager, happy light; on bared arms now shapely in contour and cushioned with firm flesh; on a dazzling smile, the like of which had never been on the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... at his mistress, which said as plainly as words: "You are ordering me to my death." The Count, his weapon high in mid-air, suddenly swerved it from its course, for there appeared across the opening a woman's hand and arm, white and shapely, fleecy lace falling away in dainty folds from the rounded contour of the arm. The small, firm hand grasped bravely the almost severed chain and the next instant the door was drawn shut, the bolts clanking into their places. Count Herbert, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... been, I think, so grievous a loss to poetry since the death of Shelley. Some of us who knew him may live to be old men, but life is not likely to give us any richer memory than his; and the passion and shapely zest that are in his work will pass safely to the memory of posterity." Mr. Wilfrid Gibson's tribute took the form of a ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... cried, and caught her slender wrist, And held it so, crushed in his cruel fist; But proud she faced him, shapely head raised high. "Most loathed, my lord!" she, scornful, made reply. "For rather than I'd wed myself with thee, The wife of poorest, humblest slave I'd be, Or sorriest fool that tramps the dusty way—" "Ha! Dare thou scorn me so?" Sir Gui did say, "Then I by force—by force ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... have been a daughter of Juno. Tall, slender, arrowy straight, but lithe and faultlessly rounded, her fleecy white shawl like a gossamer web falling off her shoulders, her haughty carriage, her wealth of purple-black hair coiled about her shapely head, a hundred times handsomer than any artifice of dressing, her brilliant complexion, her large eyes with their long sweeping lashes that veiled their depth, but seemed to add a certain imperiousness, her coral-red lips that shaped differently with every breath, her ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... awakened a reciprocal admiration. A drawing by Vanderlyn, made in Paris in 1805, and a portrait by Jarvis in 1809, present him to us in the fresh bloom of manly beauty. The face has an air of distinction and gentle breeding; the refined lines, the poetic chin, the sensitive mouth, the shapely nose, the large dreamy eyes, the intellectual forehead, and the clustering brown locks are our ideal of the author of the "Sketch-Book" and the pilgrim in Spain. His biographer, Mr. Pierre M. Irving, has given no description of his appearance; ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... distance, sat a young man, almost her match in beauty, though in quite another style. In height about five feet ten, broad-shouldered, clean-built, a model of strength, agility, and grace. His face fair, fresh, and healthy-looking; his large eyes hazel; the crisp curling hair on his shapely head a wonderful brown in the mass, but with one thin streak of gold above the forehead, and all the loose hairs glittering golden. A short clipped mustache saved him from looking too feminine, yet did not hide his expressive mouth. He had ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... house. It is not large, nor overburdened with gables, not ornamental, nor what is called striking, in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of light, the shapely cone of the hop-oast rises at the end; there are swallows and flowers, and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad. Now at Mayfield there is a timber house ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... her nostrils trembled with disdain and indignation. As they drew back,—the old man sullenly, the gambler with a slight gesture of impatience,—she came a step nearer to them and waited, the cords of her shapely throat swelling with excitement. A moment so, and then she said in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with the uncommon beauty of one sturdy little fellow. He was barefooted (on Cape Cod, in January), and ragged enough to have satisfied the most crazy devotee of the picturesque. His shapely head was set on his shoulders in an exceedingly high-bred way, while its bad archangel effect was intensified by rings of curling black hair and great, seductive ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... winter grew gray and then turned black under the March sun that melted them down and drained off their soluble parts, leaving only a residuum of mud along fences and hedges where, a few days before had been shapely piles of snow. April came with its deluges of rain that washed the earth clean and carried off the riffraff of the previous season, making ready for another and more bountiful harvest. What a ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... sketching—can time be really gained by precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of ways: for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by an intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colours. You may often make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows, and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the way she carried her head, and the way her hair waved away from her, shapely forehead. He liked the quiet strength of the way her capable hands lay motionless in her lap when their services were not required. He liked to watch for the twinkle in her eye, and for the dimple in her cheek that told a smile was coming. He ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... in making "pothooks and hangers," with which he covered his slate in neat rows, daily. But it was at the Manor House, in Stoke-Newington, that he was initiated into the mysteries of writing. His hands were as shapely as a girl's, with deft, taper fingers that seemed made to hold a pen or brush, and he soon developed a neat, small, but beautifully clear and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... of a white tramp, except for his beaded moccasins. However sordid these people may be in other parts of their attire, I note that they always have some redeeming touch of color and beauty about the moccasins which cover their truly shapely feet. Sousi's rifle, a Winchester, also was clad in a native mode. An embroidered cover of moose leather protected it night and day, except when actually in use; of his weapons he took most scrupulous care. Unlike the founder of the family, Sousi has ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... showery nights. Then all the trees of the great villas are in full leaf and all the flowers are in bloom: the gorgeous, stiff-necked, courtly flowers in the formal beds and borders of the Pope's gardens; the soft, sweet-scented, shapely carnations that grow in broken pots and pitchers outside the humble windows of Trastevere; the stately lilies in the marble fountains behind the princely palace, and the roses that run riot in the poor Jewish burial-ground halfway up the Aventine; the heavy-scented ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... she was thin and slender, but delicately shaped. She had pretty feet, more remarkable for the grace of her instep and ankle than for the more ordinary merit of slenderness; her gloved hands, too, were shapely. There were flitting patches of deep red in a pale face, which must have been fresh and softly colored once. Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately modeled forehead beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair, invariably wound ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac

... a new gown, short enough to reveal a pair of shapely ankles in clocked stockings and well-clad feet that would have been the envy of many a duchess, sat on the thwart of the boat knitting. Her black hair was in the fashion recorded by the grave Peter Kalm, who, in his account of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and in a low voice requested his parent not to talk so much. Fraser, watching Poppy closely, saw with some satisfaction a tinge of colour in her cheek, and what in any other person he would have considered a very obstinate appearance about her shapely chin. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... would have her manicure at the house twice as often as before, to increase the chance of her being on hand some morning when Jane should drop in. "Try it yourself—just to see what it's like," she would suggest; and her own plump and shapely hands would yield their place on the small red velvet cushion to the long and graceless fingers of her protegee. And presently the other processes—the soakings, the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... soon enkindled a roaring fire from the decayed and fallen branches of trees, and while his supper of venison broiled upon its embers, he flung himself upon the turf, wearied with his march. The Indian was a noble specimen of his race. His shapely limbs indicated the presence of extraordinary strength and activity. He was clad in a buckskin hunting-frock, handsomely ornamented with quills and feathers. His deer-skin leggins were fringed with the red-stained ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Rock City he pulled up short with a "What the hell!" that did not sound profane, but merely amazed. In the sodden road were the unmistakable footprints of a woman. Lone did not hesitate in naming the sex, for the wet sand held the imprint cleanly, daintily. Too shapely for a boy, too small for any one but a child or a woman with little feet, and with the point at the toes proclaiming the fashion of the towns, Lone guessed at once that she was a town girl, a stranger, probably,—and that ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... other errands. Now go." She dismissed her with a wave of her shapely hand. "But first, as I bade you, send Polly Pepper ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... lips, like blossoms, breathing Honeyed pungence of her kiss, And her auburn tresses wreathing Like umbrageous helichrys, There she stands, like fire and snow, In the moon's ambrosial glow, Both her shapely loins low-looped With the balmy blossoms, drooped, Of the deep amaracus. Spiritual yet sensual, Lo, she ever greets me thus In my vision; white and tall, Her delicious body there,— Raimented with amorous air,— To my mind expresses all The allurements ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... but the stamp of child that expands into a beautiful woman. In spite of her half-Anglican lineage and Antipodean birth, there was something almost amusing in the strong racial index of her pure Irish face. The black hair and eye-brows were there, with eyes of indescribable blue; the full, shapely lips, and that delicate contour of chin which specially marks the highest type of a race which is ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... occupying the doorstep of No. 19. St. George accosted them and asked the way to the rooms of a Mr. Tabnit. They smiled, displaying their wonderful teeth, consulted together, and finally with many labials and uncouth pointings of shapely hands they indicated the door of the "first floor front," whose wooden shutters were closely barred. St. George led the way and entered the bare, unclean passage where discordant voices and the odours of cooking wrought together ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... lastly, the huge, soft-cheeked loads of hay, towering above the teams that draw them, brushing against the bar-ways and the lower branches of the trees along their course, slowly winding their way toward the barn. Then the great mows of hay, or the shapely stacks in the fields, and the battle is won. Milk and cream are stored up in well-cured hay, and when the snow of winter fills the meadows as grass fills them in summer, the tranquil cow can still ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... Lancelot saw Mary Ann he noticed that she was rather pretty. She had a slight, well-built figure, not far from tall, small shapely features, and something of a complexion. This did not displease him: she was a little aesthetic touch ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... beard; and ending with the ghastly emblem set as a frontispiece to Death's Duel, the dying man wrapped already in his shroud, which gathers into folds above his head, as if tied together like the mouth of a sack, while the sunken cheeks and hollow closed eyelids are mocked by the shapely moustache, brushed upwards from the lips. In the beautiful and fanciful monument in St. Paul's done after the drawing from which this frontispiece was engraved, there is less ghastliness and a more harmonious beauty in the brave attitude of a man who dresses for death as he would dress for ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... was in bed, the vision came back to him, but clearer and brighter than the reality. The girl was walking in front of him; now and again as she stepped across a gutter her skirts revealed a round calf; her shapely hips swayed as she walked. Again Andrea longed to speak to her—and he dared not, he, Marcosini, a Milanese nobleman! Then he saw her turn into the dark passage where she had eluded him, and blamed himself for not having ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... little Eva herself. He could not see enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human being of the noblest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of music; and in her walk and gestures in general there was a rhythm which promised much for her ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I could see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the firm contour of her beautiful face, which, if any fault might be found with it, erred in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by nature to meet dangers and difficulties, and to play ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... By one of the unconscious arts of tenderness the two women were enshrined together in his memory. Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in all ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children. The generations were prepared, the pangs were made ready, before ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with a playful growl, and parting her crimson lips, showed them to me—white and shapely, and as even as if they had been wrought of ivory. She knew they were beautiful, ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... thee. But that should not prevent me from telling thee that thy behaviour does not correspond with the practices of the mode of life to which thou hast betaken thyself! Thou hast great delicacy of formation. Thou hast an exceedingly shapely form. Thy age is young. Thou hast all these, and thou hast Niyama (subjugation of the senses). I doubt it verily. Thou hast stopped up my body (by entering into me with the aid of the Yoga power) for ascertaining as to whether I am really emancipated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... country orderly and prosperous, a flavour of the presence of magistrates and well-to-do merchants in bag-wigs, the clink of glasses at night in fire-lit parlours, something certain and civic and domestic, is all about these quiet, staid, shapely houses, with no character but their exceeding shapeliness, and the comely external utterance that they make of their internal comfort. Now the others are, as I have said, both furtive and bedevilled; they are sly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lustre of her hair. This was of a slightly lighter tint, and had gleams of ruddy gold in it. Her eyes were large and brown, and there was a reposeful quietness in the face, which suggested strength. It was significant that her hands were a trifle hard, as well as shapely, and that ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... was amazingly muscular, and his shapely hands seemed possessed of miraculous strength. When a tire went bad he changed it with remarkable ease and dexterity, scorning Archie's ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... crept to the tamarisks, and peeping through their feathery tops, saw a very sweet sight in the pure rays of that desert moon. There, not five paces away, stood a woman clad in white, young and shapely in form. Her face we could not see because it was turned from us, also the long dark hair which streamed about her shoulders hid it. She was praying aloud, speaking now in Hebrew, of which both of us knew something, and now in Egyptian, as does one who is accustomed to think in either tongue, and ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... better if no two are quite alike; a good way to give them more variety will be to make every alternate one of some kind of open pattern, like a fret. These piercings need not extend all over the design in the panel in every case: some may have only a few shapely holes mixed up with the lines, others again may be formed into complete frets with as much open as solid. ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... utilitarian costumes, all caps and aprons. Very short skirts were the most utilitarian of garments because they were easy to get about in. Smart military little hats were utilitarian also—and could be worn at any inspiring angle which would most attract the passing eye. Even before the War, shapely legs, feet and ankles had begun to play an increasingly interesting part in the scheme of the Universe—as a result of the brevity of skirts and the prevalence of cabaret dancing. During the War, as a consequence of the War Work done in such ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Helium hid a yawn with the back of a shapely hand. "The Princess of Helium is hungry, fellow," she drawled; "tell your master ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... binds the slender zone Of fair Aurora, daughter of the Dawn. Deep eyes more tender had no timid fawn; Of perfect form was every graceful limb; The tapering flank symmetrical and slim, The head erect, the nostril fine of curve, The shapely shoulders flawless, and the swerve Of stately neck a marvel to behold. This was the stag a woodland nymph of old To swift Diana gave, remembering she Had been her friend in dire extremity. This stag it was that brave Mycenae's king Had bidden ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... Thursday in banking up the pond in the centre of the yard, but the idea seemed to drive Eustace to distraction. Such work before going to that sublime region at Erymanth! He laid hold of Harold's hands—shapely hands, and with that look of latent strength one sees in some animals, but scarred with many a seam, and horny within the fingers—and compared them with those he had nursed into dainty delicacy of whiteness, till Harold could not help saying, "I wouldn't ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her eyes glowing with the light of determination, and her small, shapely hands were clenched. She had thought of what people would say if they heard this. It would be like oil to fire. No, they must never ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... the fast young Marquis of Arondelle, while deer-stalking from his hunting lodge in the neighborhood of Ben Lone, had chanced to draw rein at the gate of Rob. Cameron's sheiling, and had received from the shapely hand of the beautiful shepherdess a cup of water, and had been so suddenly and forcibly smitten by her Juno-like beauty, that thenceforth his visits to his hunting lodge became very frequent, both in season and out ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... to read, and was glancing over it casually, when his eye fell upon a column headed "A Colored Congressman." He read the article with astonishment that rapidly turned to chagrin and dismay. It was an interview describing the Congressman as a tall and shapely man, about thirty-five years old, with an olive complexion not noticeably darker than many a white man's, straight hair, and eyes as black ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... who work so well together in the field are sure to work well together in the home. The man has the serious, capable look of a provident husband. The woman looks like a good housewife. That shapely hand throwing the seed so deftly into the ground is ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll

... Great Kaan, Lord of Lords, whose name is Cublay, is such as I shall now tell you. He is of a good stature, neither tall nor short, but of a middle height. He has a becoming amount of flesh, and is very shapely in all his limbs. His complexion is white and red, the eyes black and fine,[NOTE 1] the nose well formed and well set on. He has four wives, whom he retains permanently as his legitimate consorts; and the eldest of his sons by those four wives ought by rights to be emperor;—I mean when his father ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... (just) bathed, and when her person was bare. And seeing that one of excellent limbs, and like unto the daughter of the lord of celestials, the nose-born Aswins neared her, and addressed her, saying, 'O thou of shapely thighs, whose daughter art thou? And what doest thou in this wood? O auspicious one, O thou of excellent grace, we desire to know this, do thou therefore tell us.' Thereupon she replied bashfully unto those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... strikingly handsome man. His features were good and clearly cut; his hair and moustache were dark, thick, short and glossy; his dark eyes were quick and bright; his figure was well-made, and better developed; his shapely hands were not only clean, they were fastidiously trimmed about the nails (a daintiness common below the rank of sergeant, especially among men acting as clerks); and if the stone in his signet ring was ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... mistake. You have some fine, handsome frigates in the service, Mr Conyers, but I doubt whether the best of them will compare with the City of Cawnpore for beauty, speed, or seagoing qualities. My word, sir, but it would have done you good to have seen her before she was put into the water. Shapely? shapely is not the word for it, she is absolutely beautiful! She is to other craft what,"—here his eye rested upon Miss Onslow's unconscious face for an instant—"a perfectly lovely woman is to a fat old dowdy. There is only one fault I have to find with ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... we have got to the Eighteenth Century. And we're to have a comedy of manners, and a nice study of clothes. All rather shapely; for it contains a real Beau, and the only valet who was ever a hero, and the only hero who ever ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... somewhat reddened and swollen by the reaction from freezing, a stranger might have supposed that she was tolerably stout and glowing with vitality. And Cornelia looked at her own hands, as they lay in her lap: they were as round and shapely as ever; and there, upon the smooth back of one, below the forefinger, was a white scar, where she had cut herself when a little girl. Moreover—Cornelia started as her eyes rested upon it, and the blood rose painfully to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... the ragged sower, "noble in his tatters, a pontiff in shabby small-clothes, solemn as a God, blesses the soil, more majestic than the bishop in his glory at Easter-tide." (11/9.) It is there that he finds his "Ideal," in the incense of the perfumes "which are softly exhaled from the shapely flowers, from their censers of gold," in the heart of all creatures, "chaffinch and siskin, skylark and goldfinch, tiny choristers" piping and trilling, "elaborating their motets" to the glory of Him who gave them voice and wings on ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... the corporal hands to the inquirer a note, the superscription of which the young officer quickly scans; then turns and, while his soft brown eyes light with kindly interest and he bares his shapely head, accosts the lady on ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... the loveliest creature he had ever seen, and the sadness in those dark, magnificent eyes of hers affected him strangely. The Kanakas were a handsome race, and beauty was not rare among them, but it was the beauty of shapely animals. It was empty. But those tragic eyes were dark with mystery, and you felt in them the bitter complexity of the groping, human soul. The trader told him the story ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... assiduous visitor on board, but from his behaviour he might have been coming to see the quarter-deck capstan. He certainly used to stare at it a good deal when keeping us company outside the cabin door, with one muscular arm thrown over the back of the chair, and his big shapely legs, in very tight white trousers, extended far out and ending in a pair of black shoes as roomy as punts. On arrival he would shake Hermann's hand with a mutter, bow to the women, and take up his careless and misanthropic attitude by our side. He departed abruptly, with a jump, ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... retired magnate, than a modest bank clerk on three thousand a year. The next instant he was tripping down the granite steps between the rusty iron railings—on his toes most of the way; the same cheery spring in his heels, slapping his thin, shapely legs with his tightly rolled umbrella, adjusting his hat at the proper angle so that the well-trimmed side whiskers—the veriest little dabs of whiskers hardly an inch long—would show as well as the fringes of ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... farmer himself, but I thought he knew about shepherd dogs. He kindly forsook far more important business to accommodate, and the dogs came forthwith. They were splendid creatures—snuff-colored, hazel-eyed, long-tailed, and shapely-jawed. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... hair, piled in a silken crown on her shapely head, shaded a face that made those who saw it for the first time, catch their breath in instant admiration. Her radiance was of a glorious, compelling, and wholly distinct type, as refreshing as some view of green mountains ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... man took off his hat again, showing his shapely head, with a line of wholesome sunburn ceasing where the recently and closely clipped hair began. He was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue white- dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he looked very well when he put it back on his head. His whole ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was undivided from Loveday's, the two having originally been the single garden of the whole house. It was a quaint old place, enclosed by a thorn hedge so shapely and dense from incessant clipping that the mill-boy could walk along the top without sinking in—a feat which he often performed as a means of filling out his day's work. The soil within was of that intense fat blackness which is only seen after a century of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... hour ago she had looked at herself in the mirror and had been startled at what she saw. The lines of her black gown, the most extravagant purchase of her life, had revealed the beauty of her soft and shapely figure. Her throat and bosom had seemed so dazzlingly white, her hair so rich and glossy, her eyes full of the hope, the softness, almost the anticipatory joy of the woman who has everything to offer to the one man in her life. She had felt as she had looked: almost a girl, with music ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Granger's; but here is ice in every variety, from the solid "bombe"—which we strongly recommend ladies to bear in mind next time—to the appetizing Ponch a la Romaine! Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will perceive dapper bonnes, or men-servants, going in and out with little shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end. Madame has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away, contains it. Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice—and an exquisitely-flavoured ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... and George, standing on the edge of the dock wall, saw before him a pretty little barque of some four hundred and odd tons, copper-bottomed, with a flush deck fore and aft, a fine set of spars, and such a shapely hull as set his eyes glistening. He walked away from her and knelt down so as to take a good look at her "run;" then went ahead of her to see what her bows were like; and finally, very much prepossessed in her favour already, went on board, accompanied ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... white as cocoanut meat, and lips whose color was like the tint of sealing-wax. There was not a straight line or an angle about her plump and well-proportioned figure. Her waist was round and full, and yet appeared so slim between the ravishing curves of her shapely form, above and below it, that it seemed as if it were fashioned so on purpose to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... which had attracted me. They were of a blue so deep that sometimes they seemed as black as her eyebrows themselves. It was only when she smiled or came into a strong light that they seemed suddenly to flash almost to violet. Her figure was slim—she was, indeed, little more than a girl—but very shapely and elegant. She could scarcely be called tall, but there was something in her carriage which seemed to exaggerate her height. The very poise of her head indicated a somewhat contemptuous indifference to the people ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... boat, called traineras, is built especially for taking sardine and anchovy, although in fine weather they often engage in the same fishery as the larger boats. The traineras are light and shapely vessels, with a graceful sheer and curved stem and stern posts. The keel is much cambered, and the bottom is flat and has considerable hollow. The usual dimensions vary between: Length, 38 feet to 42 feet; beam, 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches; depth, 2 feet 6 inches to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... unbending of rank, uncrowded, unopened, squadron-leaders maintaining distance, the whole mass as ordered, shapely, and precisely correct as when ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... at once, he became aware of one who climbed half a flight above him, and, glancing up, he saw a foot in a somewhat worn shoe, a shapely foot nevertheless, joined to a slender ankle which peeped and vanished alternately beneath a neat, well-brushed skirt that swayed to the vigorous action of the shapely limbs it covered. He was yet observing the soft, rounded ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... also his fair share of human defects. For instance, he was a little too conscious of his own good looks—of his bright chestnut hair and whiskers, of his beautiful blue eyes, of his fair white skin, which many a woman had looked at with the admiration that is akin to envy. His shapely hands were protected by gloves; a broad-brimmed hat sheltered his complexion in fine weather from the sun. He was nice in the choice of his perfumes; he never drank spirits, and the smell of tobacco was abhorrent to him. New men among his officers and his crew, seeing him in his cabin, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... and other fruits and a number of gaudy feathers that he had found. Away back in the wood he began to shout to her, long before he was in sight of the hill. She answered cheerily, venturing into the wood to meet him. Her clothes were white, clean, even shapely. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... and, indeed, had almost disappeared. By study one might have recognized them in the bandage about the hand of the other. Somewhat disheveled was this youth, yet his young, strong body, slender and shapely, seemed even in its rest strangely full of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... that had attracted Ditmar? No other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good looking, and now—it was astonishing!—she seemed to have changed, and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking shyly in the mirror ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... shapely head went up suddenly, as if in proud protest against this most unacceptable proposal. Then it dropped again, and the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well-formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Vast—colossal—like a dense, dark, shapely cloud, stood that reflected being in the sky; for several minutes it remained thus, and though Wagner could trace no particular outline of features, yet it seemed to him as if the female were standing in a pensive attitude. But as the twilight gradually subsided, or rather ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... who was allowed, as this was a comparatively unimportant feature, to supply the text subject to Severance's touching-up ingenuity; but the models were devised and posed by Capron. They were extremely shapely and increasingly expressive in posture and arrangement until they attained a point where the post-office authorities evinced symptoms of rising excitement—though not the type of excitement at which the Art Expert was aiming—when the series took a turn for the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... ends to-morrow, though we shall continue to sleep out of doors so long as good weather lasts; the remaining ten days we are saving until October, when the final transplanting of trees and shrubs is to be made; and in addition to those for the knoll we have marked some shapely dogwoods, hornbeams, and tulip trees for grouping in other parts of the home acres. There are also to be had for the digging good bushes of the early pink and clammy white azalea, mountain-laurel, several of the blueberry ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... slightly inclined toward stoutness, brown hair with just a single streak of silver discernible here and there amongst it, a complexion still in fairly good preservation, a pair of keen but kindly grey eyes, an excellent set of teeth, shapely hands and feet, and a pleasant smile which at once prepossessed the beholder in its possessor's favour. Of the three younger women, two, aged respectively twenty-one and nineteen, were sisters; whilst the third, aged twenty-five, was their cousin, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... however, was a man of a different type, slender and active, his hair very dark and inclined to curl, a rather long face, slightly olive-hued, with a small mustache waxed at the ends. His black, sparkling eyes attracted me first, and then his long, shapely hands. These grasped a sheet of paper, and I noticed others, including several unopened envelopes, lying before him on the table. He laughed a bit unpleasantly, a row of white teeth ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... shock of an utter and irredeemable loss. The face that wore such evidence of trouble was a handsome one enough, though just now all the charm of youth seemed to have faded from it. It was dark and strong, nor was it difficult to guess that in after-life it might become stern. The form also was shapely and athletic, though not very tall, giving promise of more than common strength, and the bearing that of a gentleman who had not brought himself up to the belief that ancient blood can cover modern deficiencies of mind and manner. Such was the outward appearance of Leonard Outram ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... girl was dressed very plainly, and Miss Deringham decided that the fabric had not cost much to begin with and was by no means new. It, however, set off a pretty, slender figure, and the girl had fine brown hair, while the little ungloved fingers on pencil were white and shapely. Alice Deringham wondered with a languid curiosity what her face was like, and felt a half contemptuous pity for her. She did not consider such an occupation ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... and benignity and peace, were the conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were permitted no farther than ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... filled with a city crowd. The usual types of a racecourse appeared in force. Here and there were to be seen the dog-grooms leading in leash single Greyhounds or couples, shrouded in blankets, but showing their sinewy legs, their snaky necks, their shapely heads with long reptilian jaws, and their quick, nervous yellow eyes—hybrids of natural force and human ingenuity, the most wonderful running-machines ever made of flesh and blood. Their keepers guarded them like jewels, tended them like babies, and were ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... delicious to withhold: 'This bell is founded at Maiboll Bi Danel Geli, a Frenchman, the 6th November, 1696, Bi appointment of the heritors of the parish of Maiyboll.' The Castle deserves more notice. It is a large and shapely tower, plain from the ground upwards, but with a zone of ornamentation running about the top. In a general way this adornment is perched on the very summit of the chimney- stacks; but there is one corner more elaborate than the rest. A very heavy string-course ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... reading. The fire having smoldered, he stirred the sticks, turning the unburned ends among the coals, so that in a few moments the small room was filled with a brighter illumination than before. Leaning backward with the book in front of his face and his shapely legs extended in front, he studied with an interest more absorbing than was ever felt by the most devout novel reader. He seemed to lose all consciousness of time and place, and pored over the volume which to him was more precious ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... brimming with happiness, the lips parted in a smile. Her hair, with its pretty, sunny ripples, is unbound, and the wind blows it slightly back from her shoulders. And, most wonderful and striking of all, a circlet of pure gold rests upon the shapely head, and a second circlet is clasped round the waist. Then she is a queen? No doubt of it. And then comes, to the joy of admiration of all she has seen, the added joy of certainty that all is her own. This is a queen's garden, and she is ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... in sooth, an animal of most unique and extraordinary appearance; for, in the first place, he was quite seventeen hands in height, and long in proportion. He was also the reverse of shapely in the fashion of his build: for his head was long and bony, and his hip bones sharp and protuberant; his tail was what is known among horsemen as a rat-tail, being but scantily covered with hair, and his neck was ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... sell. In front of the Virgin's shrine was a prie dieu at which a woman was kneeling, but she presently rose and went out, and the girl sat there alone. She was looking down at a piece of embroidery, and Coquenil noticed her shapely white hands and the mass of red golden hair coiled above her neck. When she lifted her eyes he saw that they were dark and beautiful, though tinged with sadness. He was surprised to find this lovely young woman selling candles here ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... door opened, and Mrs. Ware and Katherine entered the room. Mrs. Ware, ignorant of tension, went smilingly to Austin, and, drawing down his shapely head ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... to explain," she continued, her slim hands clasped on shapely knees; "I mean that I can't get ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries. You know without seeing her laugh, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... Madame Sembrich caught on so grandly night before last. She is the most comfortable-looking prima donna that has ever visited Chicago. She is one of your square-built, stout-rigged little ladies with a bright, honest face and bouncing manners. Her arms are long but shapely, and in the last act of Lucia her luxurious black hair tumbles down and envelopes her like a mosquito net. Her audience night before last was a coldly critical one, of course, and it sat like a bump on a log until Sembrich ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... Innocent flung off her dainty ball attire,—released her bright hair from the pins that held it bound in rippling waves about her shapely head, and slipping on a loose white wrapper sat down to think. She had to realise the unpleasing fact that against her own wish and will she had become involved in mysteries,— secrets which she dared not, for the sake of others, betray. Her parentage could ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... Dawtie threw her shapely arms above her head—straight up, her head fell back, and she seemed to gaze into the unseen. Then she gave a gasp, her arms dropped to her sides, and she would have fallen had not Andrew ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... it from its place. The square and powerfully outlined drawing of these figures is beyond all praise for its effect of massive solidity. The other shows us the interior of a fifteenth-century tavern, where two monks are regaling themselves upon the sly. A country girl, with shapely arms and shoulders, her upper skirts tucked round the ample waist to which broad sweeping lines of back and breasts descend, is serving wine. The exuberance of animal life, the freedom of attitude expressed in this, the mainly interesting figure of the composition, show that Signorelli might ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Gerald turned her shapely head and listened a moment. "It's only Olly," she said, composedly. "I recognize the cry. He isn't hurt. Oh, you needn't go, Mr. Halloway; Olly never comes to any harm. He's ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... it behoves me now to speak. In the year 1660, he appeared to be about seven-and-thirty years of age, tall, shapely, well-knit in his limbs, which captivity had rather tended to make full of flesh than to waste away; for there were no yards, nor spacious outlying walls to this Castle; and but for a narrow ledge that ran along the surrounding border, and where he was but rarely suffered to walk, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... time, Angelina was a most attractive young woman. Tall and graceful, with a shapely head covered with chestnut ringlets, a delicate complexion and features, and clear blue eyes, which could dance with merriment or flash with indignation, and withal a dignified, yet gentle and courteous bearing, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... features were, even at this distance, plainly discernible. There was a strong resemblance between mother and daughter. They were both of medium dark complexion, with strong colouring. Both were possessed of delightfully sweet brown eyes, and mouths and chins firm but shapely. The one remarkable difference between them was in the nasal organ. While the mother's was short, well-rounded, and what one would call pretty though ordinary, the girl's was prominent and aquiline with a decided bridge. This feature gave the younger woman ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... compassed on horseback the sad fire of death, and uttered their wail. Tears fall fast upon earth and armour; cries of men and blare of trumpets roll skyward. Then some fling on the fire Latin spoils stripped from the slain, helmets and shapely swords, bridles and glowing chariot wheels; others familiar gifts, the very shields and luckless weapons of the dead. Around are slain in sacrifice oxen many in number, and bristly swine and cattle ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... the same place constantly. Then, a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps—a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... hour after I was waiting to be admitted into their house. I was shown into Alice's apartment according to her direction. She was lying on a lounge by the fire, with her delicate hands clasped over her shapely head. Her long, yellow hair fell in soft braids on each slender shoulder. She wore a negligee of white, with delicate trimmings of swan's down and looked, on the whole, the living impersonation of luxury and beauty. When ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... tenon fitted to its shapely mortise by the try rule, whose foundations were laid by our sires so long ago that the unsubdued savage still roamed in the forest where its timbers were hewn, stand as firmly as when the master-builder dismissed the tired neighbors, who had heaved up the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... only reach his hand feebly toward her in welcome. She took the brown, shapely hand in both of hers and it made her sad to feel how cold and limp it was. "But a few hours ago," she thought, "it was striking blows with a heavy sabre."—"I have brought you some strong, hot soup," she said gently, "and shall ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... of the forenoon, as we were jogging along, I saw a deer standing just at the edge of the road and looking across it, as if in fear of its blazing publicity. It seemed for a moment as if he were an optical illusion, so beautiful, so shapely, and so palpitant was he. I had no desire to shoot him, but, turning to Burton, called in a low voice, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... the history of the last two days. He kept looking at it as he sipped that gloomy coffee. Fred had faded from the great chair; his big image threw no shadow upon it. There sat a little fairy queen, tiny as Titania, but dark as an elf of the East, putting up those two shapely tiny hands, brown and beautiful, to push aside the flood of hair, which certainly would have veiled her little figure all over, the doctor thought, had it been let down. Wonderful little sprite! She, no doubt, had dragged her plaintive ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... been some sort of postal system. Letter carriers, however, could not have performed their duties without the assistance of beasts of burden. Papyri were not used as in Egypt. Nor was ink required. Babylonian letters were shapely little bricks resembling cushions. The angular alphabetical characters, bristling with thorn-like projections, were impressed with a wedge-shaped stylus on tablets of soft clay which were afterwards carefully baked in an oven. Then the letters were placed in baked clay ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... to you that he must have been sitting still for a considerable period. He was not stout—you might even have called him slender; but the muscles about his cheeks and chin hung a little loose from the bony framework, and his figure, shapely enough when he stood upright, yielded in a sitting posture to the pressure of the railway cushions. That indicated muscular tissue, once developed by outdoor exercise, and subsequently deteriorated by sedentary pursuits. The lines on his forehead ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... what was to come next. He could not conceive how Lady Mary intended to manage it. As for the lady, she tapped the table with her shapely fingers impatiently. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... I heard whispering below. Then a head was thrust out of the window—a woman's head, soft haired and shapely. "Here I am," I whispered. The head twisted round, and the face was that of the young woman who had received the messenger at the postern the day before. But it was clear that she had not been sobbing, though her face ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... namely, a sort of loose chemise of white cotton, and a petticoat, printed in a kind of Paisley pattern, which reached to a little below her knees. Her long black hair hung in two thick plaits down far below her waist; she wore massive gold earrings in her small shapely ears; a necklace of big amber beads encircled her finely-modelled neck, and her otherwise bare feet were shod in low-cut crimson morocco slippers. When I first glimpsed her she was leaning back in a chair, idly waving a palm-leaf fan, while her fine dark eyes gazed abstractedly, and with a somewhat ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... on the screen a bevy of shapely girls disrobing for a plunge in the "old swimming-pool." They had just taken off shoes, hats, coats and were beginning on—a passing freight-train dashed across the screen and obscured the view. When it had passed, the girls ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... about forty years old, who had never married. His figure was tall and shapely; his face, usually grave, was capable of much geniality. He had travelled, read, thought, and observed. He stood somewhat high in the legal profession, and came, on the maternal side, of a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... had passed away, and the shapely hull of the Mahina was eighteen inches deeper in the water than when she first anchored in the lagoon. During all this time fine weather had prevailed, and the boats had been constantly at work, the crew, however, being given plenty of liberty to rest and ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... am pretty. You should have said indescribably pretty!" And, laughing gaily, Lida sank into a chair, glancing again at Sanine. Raising her arms and thus emphasizing the curves of her shapely bosom, she proceeded to remove her hat, but, in so doing, let a long hat-pin fall on the gravel, and her veil and ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... attractive figure. It was that of a graceful young woman about twenty-two years of age. Her hair, which was a rich golden brown, and had a tendency to curl, was unbound, and as she raised and lowered her bare arms it swung to and fro on her shapely shoulders. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... hard, cold expression which does not please them. But my profile is good in spite of my ill-featured mouth, and there is—generally acknowledged—a certain high-born, well-bred look about the poise of my shapely head which gains for me more than a mere passing notice. My manners are pronounced "charming," and by many—those who like me—charmingly faultless. So, after all, in spite of this lack of a positive style of beauty, I am what might be termed a "social success." ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.



Words linked to "Shapely" :   shape, modeled, unshapely, busty, voluptuous, well-turned, sonsy, shapeliness, well-endowed, bosomy, callipygian, curvy, sculptural, sonsie, upturned, Junoesque



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com