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Showy   /ʃˈoʊi/   Listen
Showy

adjective
1.
Marked by ostentation but often tasteless.  Synonyms: flamboyant, splashy.  "A splashy half-page ad"
2.
Displaying brilliance and virtuosity.
3.
(used especially of clothes) marked by conspicuous display.  Synonyms: flashy, gaudy, jazzy, sporty.
4.
Superficially attractive and stylish; suggesting wealth or expense.  Synonym: glossy.



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"Showy" Quotes from Famous Books



... brother, and inherited his property, while his own high position in the Curia was not affected by the change in the papacy. As vice-chancellor, he occupied a house in the Ponte quarter, which had formerly been the Mint, and which he converted into one of the most showy of the palaces of Rome. The building encloses two courts, where may still be seen the original open colonnades of the lower story; it was constructed as a stronghold, like the Palazzo di Venizia, which was almost contemporaneous with it. The Borgia palace, however, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... parliament, but was now, it seemed, on the point of securing office! A little, swarthy, dry man he was, with big, round eyes, projecting cheekbones, and prominent chin. Ever dancing and chattering, he was gifted with a showy eloquence, all the force of which lay in his voice—a voice which at will became admirably powerful or gentle! And withal an insinuating man, profiting by every opportunity, wheedling and commanding ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... life-tide of a Paris street, even though but a branch from one of the greater arteries! What color—what character—what animation—what variety! Every third or fourth man is a blue-bloused artisan; every tenth, a soldier in a showy uniform. Then comes the grisette in her white cap; and the lemonade-vender with his fantastic pagoda, slung like a peep-show across his shoulders; and the peasant woman from Normandy, with her high-crowned head-dress; and the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... covering about forty-two acres, are now a park, and a picturesque little church has been built near the mansion. Some of the factories of this metropolis of hardware are fine structures, but when their product is spoken of, "Brummagem" is sometimes quoted as synonymous for showy sham. Here they are said to make gods for the heathen and antiquities of the Pharaoh age for Egypt, with all sorts of relics for all kinds of battlefields. But Birmingham nevertheless has a reputation for more solid wares. Its people are the true descendants of Tubal ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... sides are so arranged as to create the illusion that the room is of indefinite extent. To me it appeared, on the whole, tawdry, seeing it in broad daylight. In the evening, when the chandeliers are lighted, I have no doubt of its being a most gorgeous exhibition, but, like some showy belle dressed and painted for evening effect, the daylight turns her gold into tinsel ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... event, Pizarro was surprised by a visit from a Peruvian noble, who came in great state, attended by a numerous and showy retinue. It was the young prince Manco, brother of the unfortunate Huascar, and the rightful successor to the crown. Being brought before the Spanish commander, he announced his pretensions to the throne, and claimed the protection of the strangers. It is said he had meditated resisting them ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... through the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness. Notwithstanding the complacent grimaces of his face, the self-sufficiency of his looks, his systematically powdered and dressed hair, his showy dress, his counted and short bows, and his presumptuous conversation, teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape even ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... the collector, gravely, producing the showy commission, "I have sent for you at the president's bidding. This document that I present to you confers upon you the title of Admiral of this great republic, and gives you absolute command of the naval forces and fleet of our country. You may think, ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... by which we mean cheap and showy things with no real beauty, comes from St. Audrey, another name for St. Etheldreda, who founded Ely Cathedral. In the Middle Ages St. Audrey's Fair used to be held at Ely, and as fairs are always full of cheap and showy things, it was from this ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... management on the part of Mrs. Jarvis to get showy personages to attend her entertainment, the simple elegance of the two carriages that bore the Effingham party, threw all the other equipages into the shade. The arrival, indeed, was deemed a matter of so much moment, that intelligence was conveyed to the lady, who was still at her post in ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... indeed perfectly charming in all respects, and, besides, united with most enticing coquetry every accomplishment, danced with much grace, played on several instruments, and was full of intelligence; in fact, she had received that kind of showy education which forms the most charming mistresses and the worst wives. The Emperor told me one day, at eight o'clock in the evening, to seek her at her mother's, to bring her and return at eleven o'clock at latest. My visit caused no surprise; and I saw that these ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... puts on all her jewellery at once, immediately after breakfast. As his own brain never rests, he does not realise that there are other brains which feel fatigue; and as his own taste is for what is hard, ringing, showy, drenched with light, he does not leave any cool shadows to be a home for gentle sounds, in the whole of his work. His books are like picture galleries, in which every inch of wall is covered, and picture screams at picture ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... curiously compounded of the personal and the mercenary; his well-ordered establishment at Prince's Gate had loomed behind the figure of the man forming a pleasing background to the portrait. Without being showy he was a splendid "match" for any woman. His wife would have access to good society, and would enjoy every luxury that wealth could procure. This was the picture lovingly painted and constantly retouched ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... being the only one of the party who had not succeeded in doing so. I found in my book a casting-line of double gut: it was only two yards long, but I thought I had better trust to it than the single gut which the fish had been breaking for me the last two days. I also found in my book a few large showy salmon-flies tied on double gut: with these I started, determined to do or die. I was on the pool at 5 A. M., and had raised two salmon, and caught two large trout, which often took our flies when we were casting for bigger fish. At 6.30 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... advantages had been limited to a knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering, with a something of grammar. Miss Brown's childhood had passed under the tutilage of accomplished masters. She could dance, execute a few showy pieces upon the piano without a blunder, utter glibly French and Italian phrases, and had, with the help of her teacher, finished, creditably, a landscape, a gorgeous sunset, of amber and crimson, and purple-tinted clouds, which hung ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... don't know. He seems to me rather showy and bad form. What are his people like, Dad? He's only a second ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers' shops; where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at full speed, or a strange animal, supposed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... been decided at once, for Maggie was her pet, her pride, the intended bride of Arthur Carrollton; but Theo was a different creature altogether, and though the Conway blood flowing in her veins entitled her to much consideration, she was neither showy nor brilliant, and if she could marry two hundred thousand dollars, even though it were American coin, she would perhaps be doing quite as well as could be expected. So Madam Conway replied at last that she would consider the matter, and if she found that Theo's feelings were fully ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... way along, they turned a corner into a better part of the town. Here the houses were better; but on the whole very shabby. The influence of the oil boom was being felt, however, and here and there immense and showy residences were being built. ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... trivial, transitory life, it seemed as a foil to the vast eternal scene. The hanging judge still strutted with his cigar, peering jocosely from under the broad brim of his Panama; the great actor still posed aloof, the human Matterhorn of the group. I descried no showy woman with a tall youth dancing attendance; among the brick-red English faces there was not one that bore the least resemblance to the latest photograph ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... jig: of her toilette, made largely by her own hands, she was comically vain. In The Fraserians, a charming off-hand description of the contributors to that magazine, Lady Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet before a mirror with a funny mixture of satisfaction and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... liberty, to a sturdy individualism, to civil and to political liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolutism in government; it is clannish; it loves chieftains; it develops a people that crave strong and showy governments to support and plan for them. The Anglo-Saxon race belongs to the great German family, and is a fair exponent of its peculiarities. The Anglo-Saxon carries self-government and self-development with him wherever ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... cherries from his hat and exchanging jests with other loiterers like himself. "That is he," said the innkeeper; "John Marshall is his name." But the old countryman, who had a hundred dollars in his pocket, proposed to spend it on something more showy and employed a solemn, black-coated, and much powdered bigwig. The latter turned out in due course to be a splendid illustration of the proverb that "fine feathers do not make fine birds." This the crestfallen rustic soon discovered. Meantime he had listened with amazement ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... day. These nymphs of the wash-tub are painfully familiar and plain. The dress is a bright cotton foulard bound on like the anatomy of a turban and garnished, as were our grandmothers' nightcaps, with huge front bows. Gaudy shawls cover white cotton jackets; and skirts of bright, showy longcloth suggest the parrot or the cockatoo. The ornaments are large gold earrings and necklaces of beads or coral. I could not but remark the difference of tone. There was none of the extreme 'bumptiousness' and pugnacious impudence of ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... more provincial than his, at least her tone was less so, and her utterance was prettier than if, like him, she had aped an Anglicized mode of speech. James would, I am sure, have admired her more if she had been dressed on Sundays in something more showy than a simple cotton gown; and I fear that her poverty had its influence in the freedoms he ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... in a humdrum chronicle; it demanded imagination to interpret the commonplace and to transfigure the humdrum, revealing their essential significance. And this imagination the author had not at his call, in spite of his command over the more showy invention. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... Sundays is fragrant with wintergreens, black birch, and crinkle-root, to say nothing of the harvest apples that grew in our neighbor's orchard; and the memory of my Sundays in later years is fragrant with arbutus, and the showy orchid, and wild strawberries, and touched with the sanctity of woodland walks and hilltops. What day can compare with a Sunday to go to the waterfalls, or to "Piney Ridge," or to "Columbine Ledge," or to stroll along "Snake Lane"? What sweet peace and repose is over all! ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... her woman's nature was pointed flame: In the fulness of her history we perceive nothing histrionic. Capricious or enthusiastic in her youth, she never trifled with feeling; and if she did so with some showy phrases and occasionally proffered commonplaces in gilt, as she was much excited to do, her moods of reflection were direct, always large and honest, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... lodging-houses, and, at any rate, has been built up by the influx of summer visitors,—a sandy soil, level, and laid out with well-paved streets, the principal of which are enlivened with bazaars, markets, shops, hotels of various degrees, and a showy vivacity of aspect. There are a great many donkey-carriages,—large vehicles, drawn by a pair of donkeys; bath-chairs, with invalid ladies; refreshment-rooms in great numbers,—a place where everybody seems to be a transitory guest, nobody at home. The main street leads directly down to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... letters lying about her, looked up attentively, and discreetly answered nothing. Anne Ford was my cousin, but not hers, and I knew without discussing it, that Sally cared for her no more than I. She was made of showy fibre, woven in a brilliant pattern, but the fibre was a little coarse, and the pattern had no shading. She was rich and a beauty and so used to being the centre of things, and largely the circumference ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... girls arrange themselves into a half-circle, their scarlet costumes forming a bright crescent, terminating in a mass of spectators, whose half-naked bodies, varying in color from pale olive to mahogany, are arrayed in costumes scarcely less showy than the dancers. The chaperone and eight outside girls tom-tom an appropriate Nautch accompaniment on drums with their fingers, the four prettiest girls advance, and favoring me with sundry smiles, and coquettish glances ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Before long a showy gondola, fashioned like a dragon, with flashing torches and many paddles, approached; and a Siamese official mounted the side, swaying himself with an absolute air. The red langoutee, or skirt, loosely folded about ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... relates to the effects of the superficial cultivation that our women are getting in this century. A mind polished so that the "rough" cannot manifest itself, a little veneering of knowledge and showy accomplishments, but a heart, alas!—ignored and neglected; the source of all womanly perfection blocked up and destroyed—that is the sacrifice that will alone appease the world in its most sensual phase of to-day, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... same ez a calico hoss,' sez he; 'what they have in cirkises, but ye never see 'em that color.' En he was right, for when I looked him over I never DID see such a soft and silky coat, and his mane and tail jest glistened. 'It IS a little too showy for ye,' sez I, 'but I might take him at a fair price. What's your fr'en' askin'?' 'He won't sell him to anybody but me,' sez Lummox; 'he's a horror o' hoss traders, anyway, and his price is more like a gift to a fr'en'.' 'What might that price be, ef it's a fair question?' sez I, for the more ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... home to receive him. They were about a mile from the house. They had not gone far before the rear-guard intermitted blackberrying for an instant, and uttered an eldrich screech; then proclaimed, "Another coach! another coach!" It was a light break coming gently along, with two showy horses in it, and a pony ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... yet committed themselves to formal hospitality of the somewhat showy character that obtained in the neighborhood, but they kept open house for all who liked to come, and whom they themselves liked well enough to ask in the first instance. And here (as in some other matters) this curious pair discovered ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... knows it, be practically too far in for all that free testimony and pleasant, easy talk that are incidental to the earlier or more detached stages of a relation. There are relations that soon get beyond all merely showy appearances of value for us. Their value becomes thus private and practical, and is represented by the process—the quieter, mostly, the better—of absorption and assimilation of what the relation has done for us. For persons thus indebted to the genius of France—however, in ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... prismatic; full-colored, high-colored, deep-colored; doubly-dyed; polychromatic; chromatogenous^; tingible^. bright, vivid, intense, deep; fresh, unfaded^; rich, gorgeous; gay. gaudy, florid; gay, garish; rainbow-colored, multihued; showy, flaunting, flashy; raw, crude; glaring, flaring; discordant, inharmonious. mellow, pastel, harmonious, pearly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... philosophers calls the Port Esquiline of Derision. M. Jerome was, upon the whole, a handsome man, with a romantically bilious complexion; and the expression of his large dark eyes was really profound and striking. His costume was always fashionable, without being showy; and there was nothing to object to but a diamond ring, somewhat too ostentatiously displayed on the little finger, which, in all his manual operations, at dinner or elsewhere, always cocked up with an impertinent 'look-at-me air,' that I did not like. When, indeed, this dandy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... of what might be called a "church-goer's pug," answered to the name of "My Lord." His mistress, a woman of about fifty years of age, corpulent and of middle size, was dressed in a costume as gloomy and severe as that of Georgette was gay and showy. It consisted of a brown robe, a black silk mantle, and a hat of the same dye. The features of this woman might have been agreeable in her youth; and her florid cheeks, her correct eyebrows, her black ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... or a fool, of all things most detestable is "a man of society;" a brilliant, showy person, who gathers round him a knot of listeners, to whom his one object is to exhibit himself. But it is no small advantage for a man, even a clever or learned man, to feel and appear at home in any company; to be neither eccentric, nor proud nor ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... be preceded by some sort of power, equal at least in vigor, vigilance, promptitude, and decision, to a military government. For such a preparatory government, no slow-paced, methodical, formal, lawyer-like system, still less that of a showy, superficial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or of men like ladies, least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry,—none of these ever will or ever can lay the foundations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... are arranged in the form of a spike protected by a modified leaf called the bract. They are white in color, crowded together on the spike and consist of stamens which hold the pollen. The flowers do not have the showy colored bracts which forms so prominent a feature in those of many other plants. The female flowers consist only of the necessary parts. As the pollen occurs in enormous quantities and as the plants generally grow in groups, it is very probable that some flowers are pollinated by the wind. The ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... Bobolink (Icterus agripennis). He is like a rare wit in our social or political circles. Everybody is talking about him and quoting his remarks, and all are delighted with his company. He is not without great merits as a songster; but he is well known and admired, because he is showy, noisy, and flippant, and sings only in the open field, and frequently while poised on the wing, so that everybody who hears him can see him, and know who is the author of the strains that afford him so much delight. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... begun to imagine myself the lucky centre of a thousand and one happy possibilities. I was grown up, and out in the world, the wife of a very rich man, with costly plumes in my bonnet, and rich lace on my showy parasol, like the lady who had just driven by: I was quite my own mistress, with servants and other people to obey me. I had a dashing barouche of my own, and was rolling in conscious grandeur past my step-mother's window, with the back of my expensive bonnet turned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... as the showy, superficial, impudent and self-conceited will almost always be preferred, even in utmost stress of danger and calamity of the State, to the man of solid learning, large intellect, and catholic sympathies, because he is nearer ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the lowest possible prices. At first the Administration will purchase these things from the private manufacturers, in such large quantities that it will be able to obtain them at the very cheapest rate, and as there will be no heavy rents to pay for showy shops, and no advertising expenses, and as the object of the Administration will be not to make profit, but to supply its workmen and officials with goods at the lowest price, they will be able to sell them much cheaper than the profit-making ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... listened—ay, undoubtedly she listened—to every word that was said. I did not wonder at it: when his tongue was once unloosed few people could talk better than John Halifax. Not that he was one of your showy conversationalists; language was with him neither a science, an art, nor an accomplishment, but a mere vehicle for thought; the garb, always chosen as simplest and fittest, in which his ideas were clothed. His conversation was never wearisome, since he only spoke when ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... There was Mr. Strong, too, and he wanted me to meet his wife and little girl. And Mr. Pastor! I had almost forgotten Mr. Pastor. I arrived at the corner of Washington and Dover Streets, on my way home, and looked into Mr. Pastor's showy drug store as I passed, and that reminded me of the history ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... to her early travels—at the age of eighteen: she had at that period made, with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the Lake of Geneva. Maisie had in the old days been regaled with anecdotes of these adventures, but they had with time become phantasmal, and the heroine's quite showy exemption from bewilderment at Boulogne, her acuteness on some of the very subjects on which Maisie had been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high note of the majesty, of the variety of advantage, with which ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... Crown-Prince passes naturally at Berlin. We find he takes a good deal to the French Ambassador, one Marquis de la Chetardie; a showy restless character, of fame in the Gazettes of that time; who did much intriguing at Petersburg some years hence, first in a signally triumphant way, and then in a signally untriumphant; and is not now worth any ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... fine ladies flashes the vision of "Anonyma," with her meretricious beauty, and her daring toilettes. Amenable to no social Mrs. Grundy, her love of dress develops itself in bold contrasts of color, in bizarre and showy ornaments, in picturesque, and often in grotesque and tawdry effects. But whatever the details, the whole is always striking. Our women longing for the new, accept the absurd; desiring the picturesque, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... flesh-colored flowers. The long, scarlet wands of Pentstemon barbatus are conspicuous in the borders; this should be in every garden, it is so profuse and hardy. Many speedwells still remain in fine condition, notably Veronica longifolia; they are a hardy and a showy race of plants, and will grow anywhere. The main lot of perennial larkspurs are past, but by cutting them over now many flower spikes will be produced during the fall months. The yucca or bear-grass is in perfection; its massive flower scapes are very telling. It will grow anywhere, and once ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... event to me; and I have watched its rapid increase year by year till it has come to be one of our commonest species. Its singular habits and intelligence give it a still better claim to notice. It is a big, showy, loud-buzzing insect, with pink head and legs, wings with brown reflections, and body encircled with alternate bands of black and pale gold, and has a preference for large composite flowers, on the honey of which it feeds. Its young is, however, an insect-eater; but the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... a scholar in the great educational establishment, she might be considered as on the whole the most popular girl in the whole bevy of them. The studious ones admired her for her facility of learning, and her extraordinary appetite for every form of instruction, and the showy girls, who were only enduring school as the purgatory that opened into the celestial world of society, recognized in her a very handsome young person, who would be like to make a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of the Compositae family are found in many parts of the world. In far-off China a flower-loving Catholic missionary noted a showy flower of late summer and early autumn. That was nearly two hundred years ago. The flower was what is botanically known as Callistephus, a Greek term meaning beautiful crown. From a scientific standpoint it was not an Aster at all, though closely related to that ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... likewise wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribands, or among the more opulent and showy classes by brass, and even silver, chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... pitiful farce is declared "over." We wonder "Why do they thus spend their strength for that which profiteth not?" Surely, few things in the course of a misspent life are less profitable than such over-strained efforts at showy entertainment. The "banquet hall deserted" presents on the following day a grim reminder of the petty economies that for weeks hence must secretly be contrived in order to restore the balance of an overdrawn bank account. The folly of living ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... was held in the house set apart for Bolivar, was on the most magnificent scale. The room was bright with showy uniforms; every one appeared to be covered with stars and crosses and decorations. I almost regretted that my silver key was not ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... the center a noble inner avenue of trees set in a velvet-like carpet of grass; and here and there along the way, almost in touch of your hand from the open car window, appears the Spanish dagger, with its green, sharp blades and its snowy, showy plume. Not far away stands a lowly negro cabin, where the sun beats down hot and fierce upon a great straggling rose-bush, reaching up to the eaves, beating back the rays of the sun defiantly and gaining ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... English forces were in fact paralyzed by a strife which had broken out in England between the new king and his baronage. The moral purpose which had raised his father to grandeur was wholly wanting in Edward the Second; he was showy, idle, and stubborn in temper; but he was far from being destitute of the intellectual quickness which seemed inborn in the Plantagenets. He had no love for his father, but he had seen him in the later years of his reign struggling against the pressure of the baronage, evading his pledges as ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... admonishing kicks, would persist in alluding to as pudding; and in winter-time, pancakes. Later, as regards these latter, he acquired some skill; but at first the difficulty was the tossing. I think myself a safer plan would have been to turn them by the aid of a knife and fork; it is less showy, but more sure. At least, you avoid all danger of catching the half-baked thing upon your head instead of in the pan, of dropping it into the fire, or among the cinders. But "Thorough" was always Dan's motto; and after all, small particles of coal or a few hairs can always ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... woman could. The one might like what the other disliked and feared, but the contradiction was open and natural, not secret or morbid. The two women were called respectively Madame Cordova and Miss Donne. Miss Donne thought Madame Cordova very showy, and much too tolerant of vulgar things and people, if not a little touched with vulgarity herself. On the other hand, the brilliantly successful Cordova thought Margaret Donne a good girl, but rather silly. Miss ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... estimate of his salary? and also whether it is quite the thing to expect that the pastor will advance, out of his own pocket, whatever money is necessary to keep his church from falling behind its neighbors in showy attractions? ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... up to the table, sat down, opened a book, took out a reckoning frame, and began shifting the beads to and fro as he counted, using not the forefinger but the third finger of his right hand, which has a much more showy effect. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... guests who had motored over from all the towns around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul, who turned the opening dance into a stately ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... interpreted, is a protest against slavery, and a voice for freedom." If, instead of merely asserting that this "might be done," the accomplished orator had actually done it, he would have achieved far more for the cause of abolitionism than has been effected by all the splendors of his showy rhetoric. He has, indeed, as we shall presently see, made some attempt to show that the Epistle to Philemon is an emancipation document. When we come to examine this most extraordinary attempt, we shall perceive that Mr. Sumner's power "to pervert texts and to invent authority," has ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... broad expanse of velvety turf, relieved occasionally, here and there, by such showy shrubs as the hydrangea, rhododendron, or lilac; but more frequently, and at closer intervals, by clumps of geraniums, or roses—roses of every variety. There was nothing pretentious in the garden, any more than there was in the adjoining edifice. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... handsome costume for me as a Spanish lady. I wore almost all the jewelry in the house; every piece of my own small amount and much of Mrs. Rae's, the nicest of all having been a pair of very large old-fashioned "hoop" earrings, set all around with brilliants. My comb was a home product, very showy, but better left ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... was all in the black-and-white uniform of a Blessington shopgirl; black skirt and blouse, stockings and pumps, relieved by showy linen at throat and wrists, with at waist the white patch of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... stripped herself of many necessary garments, and even ransacked her very meagre little collection of jewelry. Finally the purchase was completed with the sale of the ring which Bell had given her on the day when he had gone down on his knees for the third and successful time. That ring, of a showy style, but made of real gold and real gems, was beloved by Mrs. Bell above all her worldly goods. Nevertheless, she parted with it to make up the necessary price for the shot silk; for, what will not a mother do for ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... at last to disengage myself, I saw Lafontaine; but so hollow-cheeked and pale-visaged, that I could scarcely recognize my showy friend in the skeleton knight who stood gesticulating his ultra-happiness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... is always an attempt at fraud. A shallow mind is very apt to clothe itself with propriety as with a garment. A brain that cannot handle large things very often undertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate great powers and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper men are nothing but a shell, although many of them pass with the world for more. Their life is all on the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... market. At that time marriage was the only career open to a gentlewoman, and the object of her education was to make her attractive. The theory then was that solid acquirements were beyond the physical strength of girls, besides being unnecessary. Showy accomplishments, therefore, were all that was aimed at; but they had to be thorough. Music, singing, drawing, dancing, French, German, Italian—whatever it might be; the girl who was learning it had the greatest attention from her master or mistress during the lesson; she was ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... not practicable to show Idaho melons, strawberries, and small fruits in fresh condition, but a display with a showy array of canned fruits and dried fruits of favorite sorts attracted attention. Idaho potatoes of the 5-pound class were a part of the exhibit, along with turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, and other vegetables. There was a small ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... Milly, popping so very oddly into the National Gallery for a farewell look, found you and me together. They were then to get off a day or two later. But they've not got off—they're not getting off. When I see them—and I saw them this morning—they have showy reasons. They do mean to go, but they've postponed it." With which the girl brought out: "They've postponed it for you." He protested so far as a man might without fatuity, since a protest was itself credulous; but Kate, as ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... so open that Smith stopped short, heedless of the presence of three fierce-looking Chinamen, with showy robes and long ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... Colquhoun himself, showy; one of those high steppers that put their feet down where they lift them up almost, and get over no ground at all to speak of. Having occupied, without compunction, in inspecting this animal, half an hour of the time he considered ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... assumed a menacing form. The public rejoicings were inspired as much by hope as by gladness. A new era had dawned, the will of the nation had prevailed, the spirit of progress was abroad, and the multitudes knew that other reforms less showy perhaps but not less substantial, were at hand. 'Look at England before the Reform Bill, and look at it now,' wrote Mr. Froude in 1874. 'Its population almost doubled; its commerce quadrupled; every individual in the kingdom lifted to a high level of comfort and intelligence—the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... straggling cottage which would have been improved by paint and the services of a carpenter. Both lacks were partially concealed by vines which climbed over its sagging porch, and tall rows of hollyhocks, generously screening with their showy beauty its weather-beaten sides. A girl was in the back yard chopping wood, a rather slatternly girl with disordered hair. Peggy descended on her briskly to ask ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... irresistible contagion, are going so fast now that we have only time to note in how clever and costly a fashion the Museo Civico, the old Fondaco dei Turchi, has been reconstructed and restored. It is a glare of white marble without, and a series of showy majestic halls within, where a thousand curious mementos and relics of old Venice are gathered and classified. Of its miscellaneous treasures I fear I may perhaps frivolously prefer the series of its remarkable ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... money, obtained by the sale or pawning of estates, was spent in the outfit of the hundred thousand nobles, who, at the beginning, took the cross. Costly furs, embroidered cushions, curtains of purple dye, pavilions worked with gold, banners of purple or of cloth-of-gold, showy costumes, and shining armor,—such was the splendor that met the eyes of thousands who had never before beheld such a spectacle. The journey to the East brought under the observation of the crusaders, arts and fashions ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... usages of Greece. Amongst his co-religionists he is supposed to symbolize one of the Apostles of Christ, who went forth ill clothed and coarsely shod to preach the Gospel; whereas, in truth, his comfortable hat, warm cloak, and showy stockings, are but borrowed plumage from the ordinary travelling costume of a Greek messenger ([Greek: apostolos]). The sentiment of travelling is always conveyed in the ancient bas-reliefs and vase paintings by certain conventional signs or accessories bestowed upon the figure represented, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... said in a few minutes, laying the manuscript down, "I should have cut those words out myself if—if you'd asked me which to take away. They're too showy, Mr. Tembarom." ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... sidewalk of Yorkbury, whereon the young people did their promenading after school in the afternoon. Joy always fancied coming here, gay in her white chenille and white ribbons, and dainty parasol lined with white silk. There is nothing so showy as showy mourning, and Joy made the most ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... described her to you yet, my children. Imagine, then, a showy, frivolous-looking, blonde young woman, fond of pretty feathers, and flowers, and gay colours; pretty enough in ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... from the mine, before it had yet received the advantages of cutting and setting; the other was the ornamented gem, which, cut into facets and richly set, had lost perhaps a little of its original substance, yet still, at the same time, to the eye of an inspector, had something more showy and splendid than when it was, according to the phrase of lapidaries, en brut. In the one case, the value was more artificial; in the other, it was the more natural and real of the two. Chance, therefore, had made a temporary alliance between two men, the foundation of whose ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... long enough to give some order to the landlord, who received it with rather scant courtesy; then with showy indifference, slapping his gauntlets against his leg as he walked, he left the room by the street door just as Giles Dauvrey entered. The squire stood aside to let him pass, then crossed ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... heights of this region, I presently found myself upon the great London and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all, save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the fair at Ashbourne; as I neared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... with their luncheon-baskets, or workmen seeking eagerly the noonday interval or the twilight rest. A footpath cannot be quite spoiled, so long as it remains such; you can make a road a mere avenue for fast horses or showy women, but this humbler track keeps its simplicity, and if a queen comes walking through it, she comes but as a village maid. On Sunday, when it is not etiquette for our fashionables to drive, but ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... in Europe, and those that stay at home having the advantage of society with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would think himself at home in Boston, when he observes the number of people, their furniture, their tables, their dress, and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London. Upon the whole, Boston is the most flourishing town for trade and commerce in all America. Near six hundred sail of ships have been laden here in a year for Europe and the British plantations. Here the governor commonly resides, the general ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... intended to be a showy sketch of the past history of our planet,—"we pass" (says Mr. Goodwin) "to the account of the Creation contained in the Hebrew record. And it must be observed that in reality two distinct accounts are given us in the book of Genesis; one, being comprised in the first chapter and ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... avec orchestre," which was published in the summer of 1836, is the work in question. Whether the "Andante" was composed at the same time, and what, if any, alterations were subsequently made in the Polonaise, I do not venture to decide. But the Polonaise has so much of Chopin's early showy virtuosic style and so little of his later noble emotional power that my conjecture seems reasonable. Moreover, the fact that the orchestra is employed speaks in favour of my theory, for after the works already discussed in the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... who was endowed with an excellent heart, but generous to a fault and somewhat imprudent. He lived in town, and married a lady of noble family who was no richer than himself. She was showy in her tastes and habits, and, I fear, induced him to increase his revenue by adventurous means. There can be no doubt that he speculated largely in the public funds. But probably you do not understand what this means, my child. It is a species of gambling, by which a ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... continuous imperial highway known as the Tokaido, was jammed with people; the sober, neutral tints of the majority in customary dress lighted up, here and there, by the brilliant, diversified colors of the performers, as showy uniforms do an assembly of civilians. The weather, too, was for the most part in keeping. The monsoon does not reach so far north, yet the days were like it; usually sunny, and the air exhilarating, with frequent frost at dawn, but towards noon genial. Such we found the prevalent character ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... the grand reviews that were held. "Over hill and dale," says a member of the Presidential party, "dashed the brilliant cavalcade of the General-in-Chief, surrounded by a company of officers in gay attire and sparkling with gold lace, the party being escorted by the Philadelphia Lancers, a showy troop of soldiers. In the midst, or at the head, rose and fell, as the horses galloped afar, the form of Lincoln, conspicuous by his height and his tall black hat. And ever on the flanks of the hurrying column flew, like a flag or banneret, Tad's little gray riding-cloak. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... them at first to wait at the outposts until he was at leisure: then, having put his troops into the best possible order, with a phalanx[10] compact on every side to the eye, and the unarmed persons out of sight, he desired the heralds to be admitted. He marched out to meet them with the most showy and best-armed soldiers immediately around him, and when they informed him that they had come from the King with instructions to propose a truce, and to report on what conditions the Greeks would agree to it, Klearchus replied abruptly—"Well then—go and tell the King, that our first business ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... famous "fairing" was "St. Audrey's laces." St. Audrey, or Etheldreda, in the days of her youthful vanity was very fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "St. Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; hence the adjective has come to be applied to all cheap and showy pieces of female ornament. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... was mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and popularity—with gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial acquirements, pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable temper, and a loving heart—felt towards Fanny as towards a younger sister. With the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old friend of Dr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... really arduous composition, Christ's Entry into Jerusalem.[7] The picture is of the utmost import as affording the only evidence of the artist's attainments in Vienna. In the first place to be remarked is the striking fact that not a vestige remains of the French school of David, or of the showy masters of the Italian decadence; the work, indeed, might have been designed as a protest against the Viennese Academy, and as a justification of the painter's revolt. The style adopted is conjointly that of the Italian pre-Raphaelite and of the early German and Flemish masters. The ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... sepals (the posterior one) in the form of a helmet; hence the English name monkshood. Two of the petals placed under the hood of the calyx are supported on long stalks, and have a hollow spur at their apex, containing honey. They are handsome plants, the tall stem being crowned by racemes of showy flowers. Aconitum Napellus, common monkshood, is a doubtful native of Britain, and is of therapeutic and toxicological importance. Its roots have occasionally been mistaken for horse-radish. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with four oxen each, the atajo consisted of five pack-mules, all loaded with merchandise—the carretas with bread, pinole, Spanish beans, Chile peppers; and the packs were made up of serape blankets, coarse woollen cloth, and a few showy trinkets, as also some Spanish knives, with their pointed triangular blades. It was his bold luck on the day of the fiesta that had enabled him to provide such a stock. In addition to his own original onza and the two he had won, the young ranchero, Don Juan, had insisted upon ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... distinguished men in Oxford, when about the year 1823 he felt himself bound to give himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman, and left Oxford to be his father's curate. There was nothing very unusual in his way of life, or singular and showy in his work as a clergyman; he went in and out among the poor, he was not averse to society, he preached plain, unpretending, earnest sermons; he kept up his literary interests. But he was a deeply convinced ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, showy, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... and more experienced she would have known that it was too gorgeous, the coloring too bright and garish, and the ornamentation over-showy. But to her childish eyes it all ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... this tall and showy monument, standing, as we have said, in the most conspicuous spot of the cemetery, Sand's grave must be looked far in the corner to the extreme left of the entrance gate; and a wild plum tree, some leaves of which every passing traveller carries ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... same spirit manifested in an excessive care for showy furniture, in the encouragement of artificial and numberless wants, and in a willingness to live on resources dishonestly obtained, and on means belonging rightfully to another, sooner than relinquish one particle ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... withal; neither mother nor brother, nor any other kind familiar face, to look upon his gentleness in love, or to sympathize with his affections, unapprehended, unappreciated: so—while Mrs. Tracy was the showy, gay, and vapid thing she ever had been, and Julian the same impetuous mother's son which his very nurse could say she knew him—Charles grew up a shy and silent youth, necessarily reserved, for lack of some one to understand ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... could not help thinking, as I was reading this holy book, when that showy dame came in from whose hand I so often took the poisonous cup, how much I owed to God for saving me from ruin, and giving me that peace and satisfaction in religion which I now enjoy; and making me, I hope, a blessing to you all. O, what a love was the love of Christ to poor sinners! He gave ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... forth, without regard to order—indeed, we may say, in charming disorder—are the showy stuffs, the glass beads, the ivory tusks, the rhinoceros'-teeth, the shark's-teeth, the honey, the tobacco, and the cotton of these regions, to be purchased at the strangest of bargains by customers in whose eyes each article has a price only in proportion to ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... to proceed farther, we must have the flowers of the plant, as botanical classification goes from this point on the basis of the flowers. The class Dicotyledoneae is separated into sub-classes according to whether the flower's corolla (the showy part of the flower which ordinarily gives it its color) is all in one piece, or is divided into a number of parts. The coffee flower is arranged with its corolla all in one piece, forming a tube-shaped arrangement, and accordingly the coffee plant belongs ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... what she is likely to be? But how can a man judge what sort of wife he may probably expect in a lady, whom he meets with only at public places, or whom he never sees even at her own house, without all the advantages or disadvantages of stage decoration? A man who marries a showy, entertaining coquette, and expects that she will make him a charming companion for life, commits as absurd a blunder as that of the famous nobleman, who, delighted with the wit and humour of Punch ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... seek Bob's bedroom, for I knew not where it might lie; but I changed into the serge suit, cap and brown shoes of Doria and packed Redmayne's clothes, tweeds and showy waistcoat, boots and stockings into my handbag with the wig and mustaches and my weapon. Soon after four o'clock I left—a clean-shorn, brown sailorman: "Giuseppe Doria," ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... elegance of life there, contrasting with while it adds some mysterious endearment to the thought of his own rude home. Without envy, in hope only one day to share, to win them by kindness, he gazes on the motley garden-plots, the soft bedding, the showy toys, the delicate keep of the children of Phaedra, who turn curiously to their half-brother, venture to touch his long strange gown of homespun grey, like the soft coat of some wild creature who might ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... such an institution, they have sought to make their pupils faithful to themselves and to their opportunities. In the working of the college, the training of character has been regarded as of prime importance. While sound scholarship has been insisted upon,—sound rather than showy,—no scholarship has been allowed to take the place of character. The moral element has ever been held uppermost, and the endeavor has been to blend it with all the studies of the assigned curriculum. A truly manly character has been the finished ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... much the man who delineated or sang his deeds, as the minister who helped him to legislate, or the diplomatist who drew up protocols and treaties. The Emperor was a lover of noise and show, and his time was a showy and a noisy one. Bonaparte had, in this respect, little enough of the genuine Tyrant nature. Unlike his nephew, he loved neither silence nor darkness; he loved the reflection of his form in the broad noon of publicity, and the echo of his tread upon the sounding soil of popular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... humming-bird with its tiny green body and long bill. It looks as if it were ready to fly or to sing. I selected the trimming for sister May's new hat too. It is brown velvet and has an oriole on it; you know they are so showy and bright it makes you almost think you are in the woods. At Madame Oiseau Mort's, where I get my millinery, there was another hat I had a notion to take. It was built up with robins' wings and part of a tern was on it too, I believe—just lovely! but afterward I was glad I didn't buy it, ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... medecin were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced le Misanthrope, a frank and noble spirit's sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. "This misanthrope's despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time," wrote Boileau one day. The indignation of Alceste is deeper and more universal than that of Boileau against bad poets; he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... femmes de France," who financed it and managed the entire establishment. Many of these women were society ladies and, with the exception of two or three, most incompetent. Before the German occupation their activities had mostly been of a showy character. They were all dainty, smart, and useless, and so they remained under German rule—those, at least, who did not run away. They avoided nursing Germans with great skill, and overcrowded the French and English wards. They were very diplomatic in their dealings with the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... quaint, delicious, witty little lecture on the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act. Here Major Talbot's delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair's breadth—from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed—"the one-thousandth part of a grain too much pressure, gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness, instead of the aroma, of this heaven-bestowed plant"—to his solicitous ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... competition now adopted, may be summed up in the statement, that the tests according to which success is awarded, are not so contrived as to secure the success of the best competitors. Some of them, for example, are calculated to give an advantage to the superficial and the showy. But that is to say that they are incompatible with the true principle which they were intended to embody; and that we should reform our method, not in the direction of limiting competition, but in the direction of so framing our system that it may be a genuine ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him, soul and body; cafes, arcades, mutoscopes, and every sign ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... that the crowd was everywhere large. They stopped for a minute or two in front of a booth of more pretensions than the generality. In front of it a man was beating a drum, and a negro walking up and down attired in showy garments. The drum ceased ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... unostentatious and inexpensive gatherings of friends were a most delightful social institution among the best middle-class people of Edinburgh some sixty or seventy years ago. What they are now I cannot tell. But I fear they have disappeared in the more showy and costly tastes that have sprung up in the progress of what is called ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... across the intervening space, hailing us a friend, and at the same time waving his hand, to prevent his own people from opening their fire. Lane and myself were not backward in returning this greeting; and on approaching we beheld a handsome young man, dressed in the showy Austrian uniform, with a black Tartar sheepskin cap on his head, who, coming up, accosted us in French, and with all the frankness of a soldier, introduced himself as Count Szechinge, a captain of Austrian dragoons, then on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Hispalis and Emerita[172] he enrolled new families of settlers, granted the franchise to the whole community of the Lingones,[173] and made over certain Moorish towns as a gift to the province of Baetica. Cappadocia and Africa were also granted new privileges, as showy as they were short-lived. All these grants are excused by the exigences of the moment and the impending crisis, but he even found time to remember his old amours and passed a measure through the senate restoring Poppaea's statues.[174] He is believed also to have thought of celebrating Nero's ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... the preceding evening, and very unlike either of them. It was a lady, not young, of somewhat small figure, trim, and nicely dressed. Indeed she was rather handsomely dressed and in somewhat French taste; she had showy gold earrings in her ears, and a head much more in the mode than either Mrs. Derrick's or her daughter's. The face of this lady was plain, decidedly; but redeemed by a look of sense and shrewdness altogether unmixed with ill nature. The ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... the many courts of the Temple many times, but no sight or word of the boy rewarded their search. The bloody altars, the showy costumes of the priests; the chants; the readings; seemed like mockery to them. They wished themselves back in their humble village, with their boy by their side. They prayed and besought Jehovah to grant their hopes and desire, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... called the beautiful women of the South "Large, showy flowers without fragrance." Was she a large, showy flower? Forget- me-nots were certainly by no means showy, but they were none the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... high-street gay signs of triumph wore, Covered with showy cloths of different dye, Which deck the walls, while sylvan leaves in store, And scented herbs upon the pavement lie. Adorned is every window, every door, With carpeting and finest drapery; But more with ladies fair, and richly drest, In costly ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto



Words linked to "Showy" :   flashy, theatrical, show, colorful, pretentious, attractive, colourful, showy daisy, showiness, ostentatious, sporty



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