Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Slouch   Listen
noun
Slouch  n.  
1.
A hanging down of the head; a drooping attitude; a limp appearance; an ungainly, clownish gait; a sidewise depression or hanging down, as of a hat brim.
2.
An awkward, heavy, clownish fellow. (Colloq.)
Slouch hat, a soft, limp hat of unstiffened cloth or felt.






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





"Slouch" Quotes from Famous Books



... shoulders, or have their shoulder blades grown out, or have their spines twisted, from growing too fast, from being allowed to slouch in their gait, and from not having sufficient nourishing food, such as meat and milk, to support them while the rapid growth of childhood ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... a slouch-hatted, long-cloaked, sour-faced fanatic, like the rest of you, whom I took to be the steward or commissary I heard spoken of in the town; the other was a short sturdy fellow, with a wood-knife at his girdle, and a long quarterstaff ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... the head-covering of the occupants, for it is this which mostly meets the eye; and no one who has traveled in the United States, for example, can have failed to observe the striking difference between the aspect of a car in the South, where the felt slouch prevails, and of one in the North, where the silk hat is more affected. But cars full of turbans! There were turbans of silk, of muslin, of woolen; white turbans, red, green and yellow turbans; turbans with knots, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... pair of pursuers to their seemingly hopeless task, we must return to the score of locomotive pirates. These men who had done such strange work at Big Shanty were by no means what they seemed. They were clad in the butternut gray and the slouch hats of the Confederacy, but their ordinary attire was the blue uniform of the Union army. They were, in truth, a party of daring scouts, who had stealthily made their way south in disguise, their purpose being to steal a train, burn the bridges behind them as they fled, and thus ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... that he must make his escape instantly or be caught helpless like a rat in a trap to be done to death. He fled with all his speed, and Jim was no slouch of a runner. Down the narrow stairway he sped, and along the hall to the second floor. The question was, could he reach the library where he had climbed in, before the gang in the banquet hall came ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... girl who lounged against the door-post to see so fine a company ride by, I gave an order to fetch the taverner. He came with a slouch, a bent back, and humble, timid eyes—a very different attitude from that which he had last adopted ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... on her back as she walked quietly away; that same little peremptory back that once in her father's caleche used to hold itself stiff when 'Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman that lifted his slouch hat in deep deference to her silent bow, did not read unusual care on her fair brow; yet she, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... the Parliament Buildings and we walked together to the House. Heretofore I had only seen him in the uniform of a Lieutenant General in the British Army. Now he wore a loose-fitting lounge suit and a slouch hat was jammed down on his head. In the change from khaki to mufti—and few men can stand up under this transition without losing some of the character of their personal appearance,—he remained a striking figure. There is something wistful in his face—an indescribable look that projects ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... and regarding it as mountain game (as a rich man does a hare), to the gallows with him. If a man of rank beats down a door, smites the owner upon the head, and honours the wife with attention, it is a thing to be grateful for, and to slouch smitten head ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... those Whig aristocrats, the "silk stocking gentry!" As Abe Lincoln, the leading Whig present, was dressed in Kentucky jeans, coarse boots, a checkered shirt without a collar or necktie, and an old slouch hat, Colonel Taylor's attack on the "bloated Whig ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... anger into their own embraces. It is useless, however, for the body to pretend that it is doing wonders on its own account, and rejoicing and holiday making, when the thing that sits inside it and holds the whip, keeps down upon the slouch and is out of sorts. And truly this was the case just now with the soul of Captain Purvis. Deborah Pring did her very best, and was in and out of his room every minute, and very often seemed to me to ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore

... overcoat, and pulling his slouch hat well down over his eyes and ears, the young man strode out ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... hastened down the steps of the hotel and approached swinging his slouch hat in his hand, his eyes on the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... you are as smart as old Henry Clay was. Still you ain't no slouch. Come on in and I'll give you a knockin' down to her. She can't no mo' ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... again; the guard, with a severer sense of his responsibility, accentuated the austerity of his expression an stood a trifle more erect than before. Twirling his gray slouch hat round and round upon his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely survey of his surroundings. They were simple enough. The tent was a common "wall tent," about eight feet by ten in dimensions, lighted by a single ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... gentle, and Irish good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the surface with startling effect. Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college fraternity or club ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... accusation he declared that he would prove the falsity of the charge by assuming the guise of a Wanderer and testing Geirrod's generosity. Wrapped in his cloud-hued raiment, with slouch ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... lumbering old vehicle, sat a little darky with his bare legs dangling down. In the carriage sat a man who might have been a stout squire straight from merry England, except that there was a little tilt to the brim of his slouch hat that one never sees except on the head of a Southerner, and in his strong, but easy, good-natured mouth was a pipe of corn-cob with a long cane stem. The horses that drew him were a handsome pair of half thoroughbreds, and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... way from the ranks to the high place he holds. The Australians had expected to see a gaunt, prematurely aged man, war-worn and battle-broken, and were surprised to see a dashing, gallant-looking man, who might in appearance comfortably have passed for five-and-thirty. The grey-clad men, in soft slouch hats, from the land of the Southern Cross, lounging about with pipes in their teeth, did not break into hysterical cheering—they are not built that way; they simply looked at the man whose full history every one ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... prose and verse of Whittier. No one has preached a truer or more effective gospel of fellowship than Longfellow, whose poetry has been one of the pervasive influences in American democracy, although Longfellow had but little to say about politics and never posed in a slouch hat and with his trousers tucked into his boots. Fellowship is taught in the Biglow Papers of Lowell and the stories of Mrs. Stowe. It is wholly absent from the prose and verse of Poe, and it imparts but a feeble warmth to the delicately written pages of Hawthorne. But in the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... was rather a disagreeable, misty day, and they were tramping along through the mud on the outskirts of the town when they saw Brassy Bangs and a stranger ahead of them. The stranger was a tall, thin individual, dressed in an old-fashioned suit of rusty black and with a big slouch hat pulled well down over his head. He was puffing away at a large black cigar, and seemed to be very much in earnest in what ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... up, unload, and withdraw, until twelve thirty, when, without so much as a preliminary wink, the House shut its Three Eyes. A scant five minutes earlier, an alert but tired-looking man, wearing the slouch hat of the West above his dinner coat, had briskly mounted the steps and, after colloquy with the cautious, black guardian of the door, had been admitted to a side room, where he was presently accosted by a graying, spare-set guest with ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Lor, it's no good 'oorayin' now—she's gone by long ago. Well, I am glad I 've seen 'er, any'ow! Who are them in the white 'elmets? Ostralians, I fancy. No, they ain't—they're Canadians. Then who is it in the fancy dress, with slouch 'ats an' feathers on? Forriners o' some sort. Ain't them Indians dressed up fine? Here come the creams. Now we shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... The captain, slouch-hatted and barelegged, with a rolling twist hitched the faded blue lava-lava tighter around his waist and spat ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... up this time,' said Dave to Ken, as he tried the sights of a new rifle. 'There's stuff ashore here for an army corps, they tell me. It's no slouch of a job to fit us all out fresh in a few hours. They'd never have done ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... melted stovepipe; mussy, baggy old gray trousers; a blue plush waistcoat; a black, but clean muffler pinned tight up under his chin with a safety pin of the brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His hands were long and clean and white—the virile, sensitive hands of a poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Confederate commanders did have a plan and the omens which seemed sinister to him were sinister in fact. Jackson with his forces was marching up his side of the Rappahannock and the great brain under the old slouch ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a dime, a dress suit for five dollars—and to go home in June with a trunk full of flags and dance programs and nothing else. I've known students to buy velveteen pants in the spring and go around with big slouch hats and very long hair—not because they were really artistic and Bohemian, but because it was easier to buy the trousers and have them charged than it was to find ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... with a great, awkward country boy, slouching along the road on his way to Cleveland. He was an odd figure, with thick hair of the shade of tow that burst out from under a slouch hat and muffled his neck behind; his coat was thread-bare and a bit too large; his trousers of satinet fell loosely far enough to break joints with each bootleg; the dusty cowhide gave his feet a lonely and arid look. He carried a bundle tied to a stick that lay on his ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... hat of smart design, though there are indications, I fear, that the derby is coming in again. When we were young the soft hat was most commonly worn by veterans of the Civil War, in a pattern called a "slouch hat" or "Grand Army hat." Though, indeed, such romantic beings as cowboys in popular ten cent literature and the late Buffalo Bill wore sombreros, and the picturesque ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... grimly. "Den he wouldn't come, sah. No, sah. He knows dat Tom Higbee's bound to go fo' him or leave de place, and Marse Jack wouldn't mind settlin' HIM too as well as his brudder, for de scores is agin' de Doomonts yet. And Marse Jack ain't no slouch wid a scatter gun." ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... departure came he had dusted out his old hair trunk—there were other and more modern trunks to be had, but Oliver loved this one because it had been his father's—gathered his painting materials together — his easel, brushes, leather case, and old slouch hat that he wore to fish in at home—and spent his time counting the days and hours when he could leave the world behind him and, as he wrote Fred, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... could see more plainly what sort of person he appeared to be. He was tall and stalwart and gray-haired. A slouch hat was pulled down to shade his eyes, but still they could see that his face was alert and kindly and placid, with twinkling gray eyes and a whimsical mouth. He was obviously an adept fisherman, as Phyllis remarked, when they had witnessed the clever way ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... drover's train. It was so gaunt, so dusty, so greasy, so slouching, and so lazy! But as they looked at it more intently they saw that the grayish hair of its back had a bristly ridge, and there were great poisonous-looking dark blotches on its flanks, and that the slouch of its haunches was a peculiarity of its figure, and not the cowering of fear. As it lifted its suspicious head towards them they could see that its thin lips, too short to cover its white teeth, were ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... two and two, with drab slouch hat and jerkin, having one side of a darker colour than the other, and reaching half way down the body, the prisoners are led from their penal den, within this fortress, to their appointed toil. There were many old men among these culprits; and their great age rather ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... him. You find him in towns, ancient with chateaux and wonderful with age; he is absolutely himself, keenly efficient and irreverently modern. Everywhere, from the Bay of Biscay to the Swiss border, from the Mediterranean to the English Channel, you see the lean figure and the slouch hat of the U.S.A. soldier. He is invariably well-conducted, almost always alone and usually gravely absorbed in himself. The excessive gravity of the American in khaki has astonished the men of the other armies who feel that, life being uncertain, it is well to make as genial a use of it as ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... room. "Now go, and after you've put yourself in shape, and got your hair done, you'll have some self-respect. I suppose you won't begin to write till you're all as spick and span as if you were going to receive a call from him. I'm such a slouch that I should just sit down and write, looking every which-way—but I ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... a more deliberate survey of the apartment and could hardly repress an exclamation of satisfaction as he saw lying on the floor the old slouch hat which Chip had worn the preceding day. His face, however, showed nothing as Nance reappeared bearing in one hand a peculiar lamp, scrolled and formed in a fanciful pattern and in the other a large book bound in parchment, covered with hieroglyphics. Putting the lamp on the table ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... unsuspecting senior disappeared in the pine woods, when a motor car rounded the curve in the road and stopped at the signal of an individual in a long dark ulster and a slouch hat well down over the face, who had leaped out from behind a clump of bushes on the other side of the road. Two other persons similarly disguised now jumped out of the car, leaving the chauffeur quietly examining the speedometer and ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... sees criminals—are not the men in branded attire who sit in their cells and slouch about their sterile tasks, but men who walk the ranges in uniform, and who sit in the rooms of managers; for the crimes of the former are crimes of poverty or of passion, but those of the latter are voluntary, unforced, spontaneous crimes against human nature itself. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... north than Washington itself, and with other armies in his rear he was taking daring risks. But as usual, he kept his counsels to himself. All was hidden under that battered cap to become later an old slouch hat, and the men who followed him were content to ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... wasn't any slouch that was running that middle bar in Hog-eye Bend. If it's Wash Hastings—well, what he don't know about the river ain't worth knowing—a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond breastpin pilot Wash Hastings is. We won't take any tricks off of him, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... Hank and Defago were at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and anvil, the little French Canadian being the anvil. It was all very like the conventional stage picture of Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces with patches of alternate red and black; Defago, in slouch hat and moccasins in the part of the "badlands" villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless, with that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and deceived hero; and old Punk, eavesdropping in the background, supplying the atmosphere of mystery. The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... Hill cemetery would have seen a human figure moving among the graves toward the Superintendent's residence. Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of thinner gloom, this figure had a most uncanny and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head was a slouch hat, pulled down across the forehead and almost concealing the face, which was further hidden by a half-mask, only the beard being occasionally visible as the head was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak. The ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... them seats in the kitchen. It was rather roughly and inadequately furnished, and Edgar had decided that Sylvia had spent little of her time there. After they had talked for a while, a man, dressed in blue duck trousers, a saffron-colored shirt, and an old slouch hat, which he did not remove, walked in, carrying a riding quirt. Grant returned his greeting curtly, and then the man ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... brook where it's noisiest. Then it reminds him o' marm an' he feels like he's to home. Gals think they got the men scared, an' sometimes they guess right. Even Miss' Morrison makes Will toe the mark, an' Miss' Morrison ain't no slouch, ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... been singing a few bars from the opera of "Whoop 'em Up, Lizzie Jane," when I noticed that the wind was beginning to sough through the trees. Soon after that, I noticed that I was soughing through the trees also, and I am really no slouch of a sougher, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... was surprised at the appearance of the redoubtable Fetters, who walked over and took his seat at the table with the judge and the lawyers. He had expected to meet a tall, long-haired, red-faced, truculent individual, in a slouch hat and a frock coat, with a loud voice and a dictatorial manner, the typical Southerner of melodrama. He saw a keen-eyed, hard-faced small man, slightly gray, clean-shaven, wearing a well-fitting city-made business suit of light tweed. Except for a few little indications, such as ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... ef you an' me ever come to close quarters I'll perforate you—'less you git the drop on me. An' to do that'll keep you humpin'. So long, pard. It's jest gettin' daylight, ah' I don't calc'late to slouch around hyar when the sun's shinin'. Don't go fur to forget my advice. I don't charge nothin' fur it, but it's good, pard—real good, for all that. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... watchman into any combination,—he is a thousand and two and feeble for his age. However, there is no use in discussing the possibility, for it is not a combination of watchmen, begging your pardon, Mr. Vaughan. It is lonely genius, a slim, dark figure in a slouch hat. That is the way I imagine him. Do you really suppose that a watchman would take six pair of Mrs. Inness' best linen sheets, embroidered in her initials, the monogram so thick that it scratches your nose; and ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller

... and form. She noted striking differences in the tanned, lean face and the lithe body. The skin was clear and the eyes no longer red and swollen. He stood upright and moved with a swift, deft certainty far from his former slouch. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... first attracted me to Johnson was his utter negligence in the matter of his personal appearance. When he stepped down from the hotel 'bus he looked like a semi-respectable tramp. He wore a blue woolen shirt, with no collar or necktie. He had a slouch hat, without the usual affectation of a Tyrolese feather in it. His full beard had evidently not been trimmed for weeks, and he had one trouser-leg turned up. He had no alpenstock, and that also was a merit. So I said to myself, "Here is a man free from the conventionalities of society. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... intermixture of towers and battlements and projecting windows highly sculptured produces an effect as superior to the tame uniformity of a modern street as the casque of the warrior exhibits over the slouch-brimmed beaver of a Quaker." This was true of Sir Walter Scott's time, and it ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... story in last month and cut me out. O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of poems as well as my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try to manage it; here's the governor." And looking exactly like the unfortunate Mr Sedley, Mr B. used to slouch in; he would fall into his leather armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques—the last time I saw that chair it was standing in the street in ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... four-and-twenty blackguards saunter up to the huge sandhill of a terrace, as His Majesty passes by in a gilt barouche and an absurd fancy dress; the gilt barouche goes plunging down the sandhills; the two dozen soldiers, who have been presenting arms, slouch off to their quarters; the vast barrack of a palace remains entirely white, ghastly, and lonely; and, save the braying of a donkey now and then (which long-eared minstrels are more active and sonorous in Athens than in any place I know), all is entirely silent round ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... They recognised his flawless boots before they realised his nationality. And, following his, the worst boots in the world—worn by a couple of sauntering Italian officers, gay in olive and silver uniform. German men in black slouch hats ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... it's no onusual fact to see prospectors in these parts. What made me think twice about this one was how big he seemed, how he filled up that door. He looked round the saloon, an' when he spotted Rojas he sorta jerked up. Then he pulled his slouch hat lopsided an' began to stagger down, down the steps. First off I made shore he was drunk. But I remembered he didn't seem drunk before. It was some queer. So I ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... seen parading the streets. Some of them wore green uniforms, shaped after the pattern of the khaki uniform of the British Army, but most of them wore their ordinary clothes, with perhaps a bandolier and a belt and a slouch hat. They carried rifles of an old make, and had long, clumsy bayonets slung by their sides. It seemed to Henry as he watched a company of them marching through College Green that these men were not of the fighting breed ... that these pale clerks and young workmen and elderly professors ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... pleasure in watching and hearing the Red River carts come squawking along. They were piled high with furs. The French half breed drivers would slouch along by them. It seemed as if the small rough coated oxen just wandered along the trail. Sometimes a cow would be used. I once saw one of these cows with a buffalo calf. It seemed to be hers. Was this ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... son of the mountain desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... voice such as some people used when they heard of a British victory. I am acquainted with so few dragoons that I do not know their general characteristics. Few of them, I imagine, would have gone about with the slouch which characterized his method of locomotion, nor would many of them have dined in a hat so shabby that it was picked off the peg and passed round ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... stubble of beard upon his lips and chin which was in itself a marvellous disguise. He wore a loose riding dress, with a slouch hat and a high collar to the cloak which shaded and changed the outline of his features. There was nothing of the monk in his look, save perhaps in the steady glance of his eyes, where a bright intelligence ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... low manhood; and that if the boys are rude and rough and slangy, and loutish in their manner to women, the blame lies with their sisters who, in their foolish fondness and indulgence, or in their boyish camaraderie, have allowed them to slouch up into a slovenly manhood. The man at most is the fine prose of life, but the woman ought to be its poetry and inspiration. It is her hand that sets ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... the gourd upon the table. The Southerner was on his feet, with a stiffened back; and his dusty slouch ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... William Forbes, "Doctor Beattie was of the middle size, though not elegantly yet not awkwardly formed, but with something of a slouch in his gait. His eyes were black and piercing, with an expression of sensibility somewhat bordering on melancholy; except when engaged in cheerful and social intercourse with his friends, when they were exceedingly animated." ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... evening, as we were waiting three or four hours, as usual, for the line to clear, that General Joubert came up in a special train. A few young men and boys in ordinary clothes formed his "staff." The General himself wore the usual brown slouch hat with crape band, and a blue frock coat, not luxuriously new. His beard was quite white, but his long straight hair was still more black than grey. The brown sallow face was deeply wrinkled and marked, but the dark brown eyes were still bright, and looked out upon the world with a kind of simplicity ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... of their cavalry overcoats, the men of the guard still kept vigilant watch. Long years of experience on the Indian frontier had taught their leaders the need of precaution, and the sentries took their cue from the "old hands." By a little camp-fire, booted, spurred, slouch-hatted, like his troopers, and muffled in a light-blue overcoat that could not be told from theirs, the major commanding was giving brief directions to three troopers who stood silently before him, their carbines dangling ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... With slouch and swing around the ring We trod the Fools' Parade! We did not care: we knew we were The Devil's Own Brigade: And shaven head and feet of lead Make ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... more than a boy; I could see his face now under the slouch hat, and I had already frightened the life half out ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... replied Ridge, turning towards the speaker. The latter was a squarely built man, about forty years of age, with a face expressive of intense determination, which at the moment was partially hidden by a slouch hat pulled down over the forehead, and a pair of spectacles. He was clad in brown canvas, very much as was Ridge himself; but except for facings of blue on collar and sleeve be wore no distinctive mark of rank. For a few minutes the two talked of the ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... at San Francisco in the midst of the gold excitement. The town was crowded with rough-looking muscular men in red shirts, slouch hats, and trowsers over which were drawn high-topped boots. A Colt's revolver, a belt filled with gold, and an unshaven visage completed the tout ensemble of a crowd who were purchasing supplies for their companions in the mines. They strode along, conscious ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... you'd get licked, son. I wasted a good many years in the navy, Matt, and there I learned two things—how to obey and how to fight with my fists. I was the champion amateur light-heavy-weight of the Atlantic fleet, and every once in a while something happens to prove to me that I'm far from being a slouch even at ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... picture page out of the book of the old west. His stubby, gray mustache, standing out under an aquiline nose and squinting eyes, failed to conceal a mouth much given to smiles and laughter. He had cautioned the little man that it was cool, yet his blue shirt was open at the neck. He wore a slouch hat, dented and battered to unconventional shape, a dingy knitted waistcoat, unbuttoned of course, gray jeans, tucked into high boots with long, pointed heels, and spurs of ancient pattern. Hung to the horn of his old, but generous saddle was ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... hovered unsteadily in the background. This ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike black frock-coat with trousers of similar funereal shade. A white lawn tie, much soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army slouch hat that had long lacked the brush. He was immensely long and sallow, wore a drooping moustache vaguely blonde, between the unkempt curtains of which a thin cheroot pointed heavenward. As he walked nervously up and down, with a suspiciously stilted ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... individual had come up to them. He wore a shabby frock coat and a black slouch hat, which he raised with an elaborate flourish when he saw ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the burly slouch of the arrested stride, are of themselves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic Venuses and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling back on his haunches, with all four paws in the air, munching some grapes from a vine which he has torn from its ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... his head and watched Abijah Gage slouch into the room. He measured him keenly and remained silent while Abijah opened up. There had been many other applicants for that reward that day, with stories cunningly woven, and facts, substantiated by witnesses, in one case a whole family brought along to ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... bosom is open, the collar secured at the neck with a short black ribbon; he is much bedaubed with tobacco-juice, which he has deposited over his clothes for the want of a more convenient place. A gray, slouch hat usually adorns his head, which, in consequence of the thinking it does, needs a deal of scratching. Reminding us how careful he is of his feet, he shows them ensconced in a pair of Indian moccasins ornamented with bead-work; and, as if we had not ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... my life has become one of unremitting toil. Together with the rest of the Show Girls I vamp and slouch my way around the clock with ever increasing seductiveness. We are really doing splendidly. The ponies come leaping lightly across the floor waving their freckled, muscular arms from side to side and looking very unattractive indeed in their B.V.D.'s, ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... Holy Blood is carried, telling their beads and saying their prayers, crossing themselves, and kneeling at any image of Christ, or Madonna, or saint, which they may notice at the street corners. It is curious to watch their sunburnt faces and uncouth ways as they slouch along, their hands busy with their beads, and their lips never ceasing for a moment to mutter prayer after prayer. They follow in the wake of the Procession of the Holy Blood, or wait to fall upon their knees when it passes and receive the blessing of the Bishop, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... long-armed slouch of a man, with a close-cropped head (flat at the back) upon which great hairy ears stood out like growths. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, the left with an elusive cast in it that showed only now and then, when it testified to the kink in his brain. His nose, uneven in its downward trend, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... old man, somewhat taller than the average of his subjects, wrapped in a sarong of cloth-of-gold, hung with jewels, shaded by a golden parasol, surrounded by an Arabian Nights court, and guarded—curious contrast!—by a squadron of exceedingly businesslike-looking Dutch cavalry in slouch hats and green ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... slowly, contemplating the boy—who wore a slouch hat, a brown shirt with a loosely tied neckerchief, dark-blue cut-shorts and stockings that exhibited some three inches of bare knee—"I'd say, if he came on me sudden, that he was Buffalo Bill or else Baden Powell, or else the pair ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... was not red, but lurid, with the fires, and the air was laden with both the smell and the heat of the conflagration. The horsemen were dressed, as was Harry himself, in trowsers and shirts, with old slouch hats, and each of them had a cudgel in his hand. As they came galloping up through the trees they were as uncanny and unwelcome a set of visitors as any man was ever called on to receive. Harry necessarily stayed his work, and stood still to bear the brunt ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... forth from this well-ordered tomb into the outer sunshine with a sense of personal oppression and of human ineffectiveness. How slowly and how clumsily do the feet of History slouch along! And yet, if Napoleon III. had kept faith with Cavour, the fighting here might have liberated Venetia without the necessity for another war a few years later. How quiet and silent lie these battlefields of yesterday! Even so, one day, will lie the pine woods round Asiago, shell-torn and ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... whisper to one another, and say if only Jackson had been there. They mourned anew that terrible evening in the Wilderness when Lee had lost his mighty lieutenant, his striking arm, the invincible Stonewall. If the man in the old slouch hat had only been with Lee on Seminary Ridge it would now be the army of Meade retreating farther into the North, and they would be pursuing. That belief was destined to sink deep in the soul of the South, and remain there long after the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Chichester family received the second shock they had experienced that day—one compared with which the failure of the bank paled into insignificance. When they saw the strange, shabby, red-haired girl slouch into the room, with her parcels and that disgraceful-looking dog, they felt the hand of misfortune had indeed fallen ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... His awkward gait, his introverted toes, Bent knees, round shoulders, and dejected looks, Procure him many a curse. By slow degrees, Unapt to learn and formed of stubborn stuff, He yet by slow degrees puts off himself, Grows conscious of a change, and likes it well. He stands erect, his slouch becomes a walk, He steps right onward, martial in his air, His form and movement; is as smart above As meal and larded locks can make him: wears His hat or his plumed helmet with a grace, And, his three years of heroship expired, Returns indignant to the slighted plough. He hates the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... had keen but pleasant grey eyes, a square jaw, large mouth and fine teeth. "But alas!" she thought, "how terribly he dresses, with his loosely tied black cravat, a slouch hat, low collar and wide trousers—like types of eccentric literary men seen on ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... the discovery of new powers, not only in the slouch whom military drill has transformed into a man, but to labor that has found a new joy, satisfaction and efficiency in its work. The entire activities of the ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... Italian, with slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... a lean and somewhat shabbily clad man sat, his feet upon the rounds, his body thrown back against the wall, his face half buried in a slouch hat, and apparently dozing, but really keeping a watchful eye upon every movement in the room. The landlord, whose round face was lit up with a mischievous laugh, said he would bet his new frock coat, which had brass buttons and a velvet collar, and his white ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... you please," said the curate; for indeed it is no more a history than it is a sermon. The way I came by it was this: some time ago, a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer's in this parish: the country people called him The Ghost; and he was known by the slouch in his gait, and the length of his stride. I was but little acquainted with him, for he never frequented any of the clubs hereabouts. Yet for all he used to walk a-nights, he was as gentle as a lamb ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... companions, and his complexion was embrowned by sun and wind, his form upright and vigorous: and by force of contrast it was now perceived that Felix seemed to have almost ceased growing for the last three years, and that his indoor occupations had given his broad square shoulders a kind of slouch, and kept his colouring as pink and white as that of his sisters. Like Wilmet, he had something staid and responsible about him, that, even more than his fringe of light brown whiskers, gave the appearance of full-grown manhood; so that the first impression of all the newcomers was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dark-complexioned negro, five feet eight or nine inches; is rather sullen when spoken to; face rough; aged about twenty-one years. The clothing not recollected. They had black frock coats and slouch hats with them. Any information of them address Elizabeth Brown, Sandy Hook P.O., or of Thomas Johnson, Abingdon ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... Santa Fe, I immediately repaired to the largest inn, being attracted thither by a number of uncouth characters, in hunting shirts, and slouch hats. I entered unobtrusively, and took a quiet survey of the scene. The room was the cantina, and all were indulging in potations, more or less deep, of El Paso whiskey. The atmosphere was redolent of the fumes of tobacco, and commingled with the shouts and coarse ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... gentlemen of the Planters' Hotel? One would suppose they had been left behind, as here are none but men in hunting-shirts and slouch hats. Yes; but under these hats we recognise their faces, and in these rude shirts we have the same jovial fellows as ever. The silky black and the diamonds have disappeared, for now the traders flourish under the prairie costume. I will endeavour to ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... manacled, clambered out of the car. He was a man of sixty or thereabout, long, lank, wiry, with a white patriarchal beard and white beetling brows. His cheap suit of black and his black slouch hat ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... weary time in coming. Then our men descended the hill, but the Boers were already crowding in upon them from either side. The English cries of the soldiers were answered in English by the Boers, and slouch hat or helmet dimly seen in the mirk was the only badge of friend or foe. A singular letter is extant from young Reitz (the son of the Transvaal secretary), who was present. According to his account there were but eight Boers present, but assertion or contradiction ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... comfortably and given him a drink from the water bag the greyness left his face, and he pulled himself together a bit; he drew up his arms and folded them across his chest. He let his head rest back against the tree—his slouch hat had fallen off revealing a broad, white brow, much higher than I expected. He seemed to gaze on the azure fin of the range, showing above the dark ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... in those days. But I have always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. I cannot abide to see a man shamble or slouch, or throw his arms and legs about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,—great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards



Words linked to "Slouch" :   sag, carriage, slump, slouchy, bearing, swag, flag



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com