"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has just the style which, after all, does go so far. There's nothing dowdy about her. A dowdy woman would have killed me. She attracted me from the first moment; and, by Jove, old fellow, I can assure you it was mutual. I am the happiest fellow alive, and I don't think there is anything ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... sea, and seen a good deal of service on the herring-nets, and so they quite take the lead of the smart shop ships, that have never been beyond a pond or a tub of water. But that's an exception. Amateur toys are mostly very dowdy. Look at ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... great favourite and constant writer for the stage, and an intimate friend of Farquhar and Steele. There is an absence of indelicacy in her plays, but not a little farcical humour, especially in the character of "Marplot" in "The Busybody," and of rich "Mrs. Dowdy" with her vulgarity and admirers in "The Platonic Lady." She often adopts the tone of the day in ridiculing learned ladies. In one place she speaks as if even at that time the founding of a college ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... French from Italian women, Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars. All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed to Mary; a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... taken away, and he was driving home again, when he overtook Mrs. Duncombe and offered her a lift, for her step was weary. She was indeed altered, pale, with cheek-bones showing, and all the lustre and sparkle gone out of her, while her hat was as rigidly dowdy as Miss Slater's. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matter of fact, so far from discouraging the passion for dress among their female dependents, ladies of position and fortune are apt to insist on their dressing smartly. They like to see some of their own lustre reflected on their attendants. A dowdy in sad-colored print or linsey is by no means to their taste. This has been well pointed out in a letter in which a "Maid-servant" replied, through the Pall Mall Gazette, to the project of reform proposed by a "Clergyman's Wife." Looking at the question from her own point of ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... upon his tailors. A morning-suit which he had commanded being miraculously finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down anyhow, on one of Messrs Quayther & Cuthering's cane chairs in the mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces to ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... feel as if I was dressed right. My things seemed elegant at home, and I thought I'd be over over-dressed if anything; but I look countrified and dowdy here. No time or money to change now, even if I knew how to do it,' answered the other, glancing anxiously at her bright pink silk grown, trimmed with ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... As for me, the shorter the skirt the better I like it. There is always too much of it. A simple fig leaf! Mon Dieu, that is enough! You agree with me, don't you, my dear, that it is not necessary to have more than a fig leaf? Look then at this great dowdy ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... sacrifices to her vengeance. Nor was her surprise so much the effect of his dissimulation, as of his want of taste and discernment. She inveighed against him, not as the most treacherous lover, but as the most abject wretch, in courting the smiles of such an awkward dowdy, while he enjoyed the favours of a woman who had numbered princes in the train of her admirers. For the brilliancy of her attractions, such as they at present shone, she appealed to the decision of her minister, who ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Sharnall said. "It looks a little dowdy just this minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of course, and the housekeeper has already begun ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... as those vizard-masks maintain that fashion, To soothe and tickle sweet imagination; So our dull poet keeps you on with masking, To make you think there's something worth your asking. But, when 'tis shown, that, which does now delight you, Will prove a dowdy, with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... connections, was the lady, fair, faded, with mildly aquiline features, and an aspect at once distinguished and dowdy, who appealed to Merton. She sought him in what she, at least, regarded as the interests of her eldest daughter, an heiress under the will of a maternal uncle. Merton had met the young lady, who looked like a portrait ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... there is ten to one more suffering from over-swathing. For pain, actual, excrutiating; for pain invincible, somber and unutterable, one proud woman reduced to a last season's frock suffers more than twenty arrayed in customary rags and tatters. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, but not to the dowdy woman. The occupant of the cottage or cabin as he hurries home on Saturday night with his hard-earned store perhaps envies the occupant of the mansion where lights burn brightly and music fills the air, but the master of the mansion may be driven to the verge of insanity in an unequal ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... her dowdy black dress, and, opening a drawer in her wardrobe, took out a soft gray silk which lay folded between tissue paper and sprigs of lavender. She put the dress on, and fastened soft lace ruffles round her throat and at her ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... seemed to her might be utilized delightfully in her department. She would endeavor to treat dress from the standpoint of ethical responsibility to society, and to show that both extravagance and dowdy homeliness were to be avoided. Clothes in themselves had grown to be a satisfaction to her, and any association of vanity would be eliminated by the introduction of a serious artistic purpose into a weekly commentary concerning them. Accordingly she ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... about two or three hours, when we came to a dancing hall, the toughest we'd seen,—a regular dive,—and we went in, bound to have some fun. The place was full of tough-looking subs, and a lot of frouzy, dowdy girls, and what they lacked in good looks they made up in paint and brass,—such brazen faces I never saw. Half way down the hall was a big, fat woman, with her hair blondined, who seemed to have charge of the place, and was giving orders to the man behind the bar. They had some loud talk, and ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... dismay: how dared she show her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed of her, and she dared not think what might come ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... "understanding" mothers, did not need this special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to fulfil the duties of parents ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... dowdy frump!" she lamented, half-voiced. "I dressed myself while Marie was packing. But you needn't be so—so ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Another, complimenting his convenient, said, Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon, said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip. By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be sufficient to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... distilled from his experience of clergymen's belongings, Godfrey had expected to see a dowdy female, with a red, fat face, and watery eyes, perhaps wearing an apron and a black dress hooked awry, accompanied by a snub-nosed little girl with straight hair, and a cold in the head. In place of these he saw a fashionably-dressed, Parisian-looking lady, who still seemed quite ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... find entertainment elsewhere. The furnishing of the houses was within the bounds of good taste. Monumental marbles were not erected by the hearth-side; the window drapery was diaphanous rather than dense and dowdy. The markets of San Francisco were much to blame for the flashiness of the domestic interior: they were stocked with the gaudiest fixtures and textures, and in the inspection of them the eye was bewildered ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... group of six or eight, five or seven will show a lack of "finish," and the tender-hearted bride who, for the sake of their purses sends her bridesmaids to an average "little woman" to have their clothes made, and to a little hat-place around the corner, is apt to have a rather dowdy little flock fluttering down the aisle in front ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... dowdy-cow, ride away heame, Thy[1] house is burnt, and thy bairns are tean, And if thou means to save thy bairns Take thy ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... pair. She bowed indeed in acknowledgment of his words. But there was little gratitude in the movement, and less warmth. I saw the sister's face—a brilliantly beautiful face it was—brighter eyes and lips and more lovely auburn hair I have never seen—even Kit would have been plain and dowdy beside her—I saw it harden strangely. A moment before, the two had been in one another's arms. Now they stood apart, somehow chilled and disillusionised. The shadow of the priest had fallen upon them—had come ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... her favorite theme, she had forgotten her haste. "She sees at a glance all the good points of a figure; she knows how to bring them out strongly; she discovers by intuition what is lacking, and dexterously hides the defects. I have seen her convert the veriest dowdy into an elegant woman. And, when she gets a subject that pleases her, she perfectly revels in her art. Look at this dress for instance,—see by what delicate ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... it has shown him and me and everybody else that you needn't be a dowdy unless you please. No man wishes to marry ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... thought, looking at the flower-stands bright with bloom, and thinking of the social enjoyments that were about to gratify his vanity. "She was made to be the wife of a minister. When I think of his Excellency's wife, and how little she helps him! the good woman is a comfortable middle-class dowdy, and when she goes to the palace or into society—" He pinched his lips together. Very busy men are apt to have very ignorant notions about household matters, and you can make them believe that a hundred thousand francs afford little or ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... out we called in at Kamaishi, in the neighbourhood of which are the imperial copper mines and smelting works. The people here lack the rosiness and freshness of face of the Japanese, and have a dowdy, sickly look, due, I suppose, to the unhealthy ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Clara some valuable lessons. "Any woman can dress well if she knows how," Kate had declared. She had taught Clara how to study and emphasize by dress the good points of her body. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy and commonplace. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... day came. After a holiday at Godmother's, she received a hot letter from Mother. Godmother had complained of her looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to spend the coming Saturday as well at Prahran, and in her new dress, under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going against an order ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman," Madge was of opinion. "If you go into an office looking dowdy they'll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won't keep you in gloves for a week and they'll be ashamed of themselves. There's nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... "You nasty, dirty, dusty dowdy! How dare you come here to disgrace me in my own house and premises, after my sending you fifty pounds? To take the very ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... fact, it's a merino, but that doesn't matter. Fancy your remembering my wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and well at the side," the oracle, said. "I'm glad you're going to, dear, it looked just a wee bit dowdy, didn't ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... put away a good many of his ideas as to provincial life in the course of it. His horizon widened; society assumed different proportions. There were fair Parisiennes in fresh and elegant toilettes all about him; Mme. de Bargeton's costume, tolerably ambitious though it was, looked dowdy by comparison; the material, like the fashion and the color, was out of date. That way of arranging her hair, so bewitching in Angouleme, looked frightfully ugly here among the daintily devised coiffures which he saw ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... are grateful Under skies serene; But the human type is hateful On a tragic scene; When the outlook's drear and cloudy Punch would rather see you dowdy Than extravagant and rowdy In your dress ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... are not the things they were, If caste declines and Vandals Go practically everywhere From Cavendish to Berkeley Square, And dowdy frumps without the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... So that dowdy get-up is for my benefit, and is not habitual to her!—Or is it, that she has only one costume and keeps it for ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... for Duperre's wife at the hotel, and she came down wearing a plain, dark-brown motor coat with a small, close-fitting cap to match. She was, indeed, unusually dowdy ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... M., the younger sister, took the leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182-; and she herself had played for two seasons with some credit T.R.E.O., T.R.S.W., until she fell down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny's school, we say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long as she remained under Miss Minifer's instruction. And it was unremarked and almost unseen in the dark porter's lodge of Shepherd's Inn, that this little flower ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me give you a few finishing touches before we go," said Marion, a few minutes afterwards, "and I will lend you my green brooch and a veil. You must let me alter your bonnet a little one night next week. There; now you don't look quite so dowdy," said Marion, as she pushed her cousin before the looking-glass after the "few touches" had been given to her bonnet and ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... boy," she said to herself as she ran upstairs, "He's growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed." She dashed to the wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake. "Old, dowdy, unbecoming, deaconess-district-visitor-bible-woman, great-grand-auntly ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... head She took the path across the leaze. - Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, "Too dowdy that, for coquetries, So ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an angel ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... shall get, too, traipsing through weather like this. My gown and bonnet will be spoiled quite. Needn't I wear them, then? Indeed, Mr. Caudle, I shall wear them. No, sir; I'm not going out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows, it isn't often I step over the threshold; indeed, I might as well be a slave at once—better, I should say. But when I go out, Mr. Caudle, I choose to go ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... wear anything with effect; but Leucha, with her pale eyes and scanty locks, was a different sort of being. The brown tea-gown certainly did not suit her. Hollyhock, who was wearing a dress of soft silk and brightest crimson in colour, looked a magnificent young figure beside the dowdy Leucha. ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... said Pheasant. "There's my new mauve silk dress! it was a very expensive silk, and I haven't worn it more than three or four times, and it really looks quite dowdy; and I can't get Patterson to do it over for me for this party. Well, really, I shall have to give up company because I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... or two peculiarities of this kind as we stroll about the city, and they are explained to us by our colonial friend. Some extremely dowdy females we see riding in a barouche are the wife and daughters of a high official, who is stingy to his woman-kind, so they say. Two youths we pass are in striking contrast, as they walk along arm-in-arm. One is got up according to the fullest Auckland ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... she is a very dowdy, A dishclout, a foul gipsy unto thee. Come to my closet, lass, there take thy earnest Of love, of pleasure, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... brought together a great Christmas house-party composed of the odd, ill-assorted social elements which gather at the call of the wealthy host who has exchanged old friends for new acquaintances. Peggy's own people, old-fashioned country gentry, were regarded by Pargeter as hopelessly dowdy and "out of it," so none of them had been invited. With Laurence Vanderlyn alone had the young mistress of the house had any link of mutual interests or sympathies; but of flirtation, as that protean word ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... They bowed, and shook hands with Mrs. Fargus, but were at no pains to conceal their indifference to the drab and dowdy little woman in the soiled sage green, and the glimmering spectacles. 'What a complexion,' whispered Elsie the moment they were outside the door. 'What's her husband like?' asked Cissy as they descended the first flight. Mildred ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... fashionable or anything of that kind. I would not for one moment think of allowing any of my court-ladies to cut their hair short, for instance, or to wear one of those foolish hobble skirts; but nobody, nobody could accuse us of being dowdy. Now tell me, have you ever seen one of us looking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... the account in the Yankee papers of Lincoln and his wife at a reception of the diplomatic corps? It is too funny. The Lincoln woman was a Southerner. She has some good blood, and ought to know better. She was dressed like a dowdy, and when the ministers bowed she gave them her hand and said, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... his roe, like a dried herring.—O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!—Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench,—marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her; Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gypsy; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots; Thisbe, a gray eye or so, but ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the piano was draped; and none of the dark suspicious stuffs showed a clear pattern. The faded chairs were hidden by faded antimacassars; the little futile tables concealed their rickets under vague needlework, on which were displayed in straw or tinsel frames pale portraits of dowdy people who had stood like sheep before fifteenth-rate photographers. The mantelpiece and the top of the piano were thickly strewn with fragments of coloured earthenware. At the windows hung heavy dark curtains from great rings that gleamed gilt near ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... happiness of any portion of my life. When you and I, dear Sook (an awful scowl, and a sudden change of her position, on her costly rocking chair. Fitz looked askance at Mrs. Fitz, and proceeded); when you and I, Susan, lived in Dowdy's little eight by ten 'blue frame,' down in Pigginsborough; not a yard of carpet, or piece of mahogany, or silver, or silk, or satin, or flummery of any sort, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the frock as the girl worked at it; the listless hands dropped their hold of it occasionally, and she was lost in bitter thoughts. She however finished it, and then busied herself with a new bonnet for Peggy, which was to be made not at all fashionable, but big and rather dowdy. Elsie's taste rebelled a little at the uncongenial task; but she was doing her best to please Peggy when the postman delivered two letters to Jane—one from Francis, and the other from Mrs. Rennie. Francis' letters had been frequent, and had been a little ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... such things than men are. Everything is against us. I suppose women think they deceive us for our good, but they should continue to do so after marriage. 'Pon honor! I have seen the sweetest, most amiable girl turn as sour as could be a few months after the ceremony. The dressiest ones often get dowdy, the most musical can't abide music, the most talkative have the dumps. A man has no chance of judging how they are going to turn out. He is duped by the daughters, inveigled by their mothers, and, what is worse still, as soon as he is married they both undeceive him. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... "somebody" now, and she would go ahead and prove it. She could, too—she no longer doubted her possession of the college girl's one talent that Betty had laughed about. For there was Theresa Reed, her friend down the street. She was homely and awkward, she wore dowdy clothes and wore them badly, she was slow and plodding; but there was one thing that she could do, and the girls admired her for it and had instantly made a place for her. Helen was glad of a second proof that those things ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... place where she could buy a new evening dress at eight-thirty on Sunday evening. And, anyhow, he said, she looked quite nice, really very smart; besides, Mrs Mitchell was not the sort of person who would think any the less of a pretty woman for being a little dowdy and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... pack'd audience from their posts retir'd, And Julius in a general hiss expir'd, Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute your gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, "The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... had only known how ravishing that simple costume made her appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw! Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing aloft a parasol that but the day before had been the joy of her girlish existence, she was fully convinced that a more commonplace addendum to a feminine ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... dear, this is how it stands. The major's daughter is a minx just turned sixteen; lively and nice-looking (hateful little wretch!), dowdy in her dress (thank Heaven!) and deficient in her manners (thank Heaven again!). She has been brought up at home. The governess who last had charge of her left before her father moved to Thorpe Ambrose. Her education stands woefully in want of a finishing touch, and the major doesn't quite know what ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Botolph's Mission Hall the oddly-assorted crowd which generally finds its way to such functions. There were smart people, just a scattering of the cultured, dowdy and dull folk, who had "helped the good cause," and expected to get as much sober entertainment in return as might be had for the asking. Then, there were the ever-present army of free sight-seers, and a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... they gave an audible gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make every allowance. The poor thing could no more help being plain and dowdy than born in Boston, and as their leader had satisfied herself that she "would do," they would never let her know how deeply they ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... No one seeing her two or three times could have given any very accurate description of her. Lady Harriet had more than once described her as a negligible quantity. But Lady Harriet systematically neglected everyone who had no pretensions to smartness. She detested all dowdy women. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... happiness of the appellation. "See, now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter, could he but have been quiet himself, and forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at least that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents will e'en ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a pair of gray ponies along the boulevard and he was much pleased with the sight. It reached to the top of his ambition. Florence was to his eyes really the sort of a girl whom a man in his position ought to marry. A secretary of legation in a small foreign capital cannot do with a dowdy wife, as may a clerk, for instance, in the Foreign Office. A secretary of legation,—the second secretary, he told himself,—was bound, if he married at all, to have a pretty and distinguee wife. He knew all about the intricacies which had fallen in a peculiar way into his own hand. Mr. Blow ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... now," Isobel laughed, "that he was very sarcastic on board ship as to the dresses of some of the people, but I thought it was only his way of grumbling at things in general, though certainly I generally agreed with him. He told me one day that my taste evidently inclined to the dowdy, but you see I wore half mourning until ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... his straw hat, and his wife stooped low as a makeshift for bowing. An outsider might have thought that the aristocratic coach would have gone by this extremely humble couple without so much as noticing it. But the gentleman who was driving lifted his hat to the dowdy lady, with a gesture of marked politeness, and a young and elegantly-dressed lady, his sister, nodded and smiled, and waved her hand to her. After the coach had rolled some fifty yards away, the farmer pulled into the road, and went on through the cloud of dust it had left behind it, with a complacent ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... many moons been accustomed to spending their vacations together in the woods, or on the waters. In all they were five close friends, but Owen Hastings, a cousin of Max, and who had made his home with him, was at present away in Europe with another uncle; and Steve Dowdy happened to be somewhere else in town, perhaps helping his father remove his stock of groceries from his big store, which being in the lower part of town was apt to suffer from ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... about clothes. I saw her the first day she came, and was the victim of despair until she suddenly got sick and so couldn't wear those wonderful waists and jackets. I felt like a dowdy when I saw ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... really prosaic. Debussy, indeed! I met him with his wife the other night at the opera and he introduced us. My dear, she's got flat red hair, an aigrette, a turned-up nose, a receding chin and long ear-rings; and she's quite young and very dowdy: the sort of dowdiness that's rather smart. She loathed me—that is to say, we took a mutual dislike, and a determination never to meet again, so strong that it amounted to a kind of friendship; we tacitly agreed to keep out of each other's way. I suppose there's such ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... thing on the raft was a passenger, who had come on board her when about a thousand miles away in the sea. This was an old hen, given to the crew by a passing vessel. It was a common brown, dowdy, grandmother-looking hen, and in this prosaic state it was very odd and incongruous, tethered to the deck by a bit of tarred lanyard, and pecking away till you looked hard at it, then it cocked up one eye with an air that said, "Why are ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the fields at dawn, and to become distinct and real in many new and unimagined ways. Above all, I was surprised to find myself admiring her who, fifteen years ago, had appeared to me not a little dowdy. She was now fifty-five, but such an age seemed impossible for so girl-like a figure and such young and effusive laughter. I was, however, sure that she was fifteen years older than when I first saw her, but those fifteen ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... advantage of my example, and of studying my polished manners (just fancy my polished manners; and I know, because little Tom, who is a brick, told me, that only last year he heard his father tell Emily—that's the eldest—that I was a dowdy, snub-nosed, ill-mannered miss, but that she must keep in with me and flatter me up). No, I will not live with Uncle Tom, and I will tell 'it' so. If I must leave my home, I will go to Aunt Chambers at Jersey. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... said Elma, "do you imagine for a moment that that excrescence at the back of your head is fashionable? I never saw anything more dowdy." ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... now whether I've done you any kindness in inviting you aboard to see over the Stella Maris," she said. "I reckon your own ship will seem a bit dowdy in ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... old-fashioned. None would dare to despise her. She was what Hilda could never be, had never long desired to be. She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... evening dresses that it sometimes takes a kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... tower and spire, after restoration, contrasted so strongly with the "dowdy" appearance of the remainder of the church, that it was little wonder a more determined effort should be made for a general building, and this time (1872) the appeal was no longer in vain. Large donations were given by friends as well as by many outside the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... unfortunate Caroline, wife of George the Fourth, lived at Blackheath, and drove occasionally in an open carriage through the streets of Greenwich, and there I saw her. I have a perfect recollection of her face and figure. A very common-looking red face it was, and a very "dowdy" figure. She wore always an enormous flat-brimmed "Leghorn" hat, trimmed with ostrich feathers. The remainder of her dress was gaudy, and, if one may say so of a Queen's attire, rather vulgar. She was, however, very ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... beauty and kindness was the wonder of all that knew her. But the king hearing of a lady who had likewise an only daughter, had a mind to marry her for the sake of her riches, though she was old, ugly, hook- nosed, and hump-backed. Her daughter was a yellow dowdy, full of envy and ill-nature; and, in short, was much of the same mould as her mother. But in a few weeks the king, attended by the nobility and gentry, brought his deformed bride to the palace, where the marriage rites were performed. They had not been long in the Court before they set ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Beacon both waltz, and I assure you it is very distingue indeed. But be careful in learning. Your sister Fanny says the Boston young men stick out their elbows dreadfully when they waltz, and look like owls spinning on invisible teetotums. She declares, too, that all the Boston girls are dowdy. But she is obliged to confess that Mr. Beacon and Mr. Dinks are as well dressed and gentlemanly and dance as well as our young men here. And as for the Boston ladies, Mr. Dinks tells Fanny that he has a cousin, a Miss Wayne, who lives in Delafield, who might alter ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... gentleman in travelling-dress and French toupet, had at once guessed him to be the distinguished stranger from Turin. At the theatre she had been much amused by the air of apprehension with which Odo had appeared to seek, among the dowdy or vulgar inmates of the boxes, the sender of the mysterious billet; and the contrast between the elegant gentleman in embroidered coat and gold-hilted sword, and the sleepy bewildered little boy of the midnight feast at Chivasso, had seized her with such comic effect that she could ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... day, while the hunters were away, her aunt had come to her, ugly, dowdy, and alarmed. "Little fool!" she had said. "They play, these princes. But they are evil with women, and dangerous. I have seen your eyes on him, sick with love. And Karl will amuse himself—it is the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... desire to photograph the family on the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... their ridiculous little country. And they call US provincial! It is hard to sit and look respectable while people discuss the utility of the House of Lords, and the beauty of a State Church, and it's only in a dowdy musty civilisation that you'll find them doing such things. The lightness and clearness of the social air, that's the great relief in these parts. The gentility of bishops, the propriety of parsons, even the impressiveness ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... misses a help which he might have procured for the reader, to lift him, with less danger of dislocation, to these pinnacles of passion, by transferring more of the elevated idiom of the style: for, in some of the complicated paragraphs, a too English rendering of the clauses gives the sentiment a dowdy and prosaic air. We should not object to an occasional inversion of the order, even where Jean Paul himself is more direct than usual; for this always appeared to us to lend a racy German flavor to the page. No doubt Jean Paul needs, first of all, to be made comprehensible; but if his style ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... had a tiny, stern mustache which made her seem the more male and dominant figure of the two. Mariquita, the girl, was all father, and she had been a year in a Los Angeles convent. The mother wore rich but dowdy black and an impossible headgear, a rather hawklike affair which appeared to have alighted by mistake on the piles of dusky hair where it was shakily balancing itself, but Mariquita's narrow blue serge was entirely ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their usual dowdy fashion." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Slump" is a pie consisting of apples, molasses, and bread crumbs baked in a tin pan. This is known to New Englanders as "Pan Dowdy." An agreeable bread was at one time made by an ingenious Frenchman which consisted of one third of apples boiled, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... papa had gone out, was what she should wear on this eventful day; and on her mamma's suggesting that she and Julia should put on their grey dresses, she was vehemently opposed by that young lady, who declared she would rather stay at home than go to the Gardens with Mr. and Mrs. Norton in such a dowdy dress. ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... Thus we play with each other, and it is a stand-off which is cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game is ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... a body of inferior standing, was a downright outrage to the congregation, the rector, and all religion. A cold-blooded creature, with no pin-money, might reconcile it with her principles, if any she had, to stand up like a dowdy and allow a poor man to risk his life by shot and storm and starvation, and then to deny him a word or a look, because of his coming with the genuine thing at a quarter the price fat tradesmen asked, who never stirred out of their shops when it rained, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... trailing in, tall and thin, in her sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy grey hair escaping from under her floppy black hat, and with the air of having till a moment ago been hung about with parcels (she had left them in the hall), looked altogether unsuited to her environment, like a dowdy lady from ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... save you, and I don't intend you to have any worries except your own. I won't smudge my fingers over the accounts, like that wretched Dora in David Copperfield. Understand that, Howard; I won't be your girl-bride. I won't promise that I won't wear spectacles and be dowdy—anything to be prosaic!" ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well—but you can't be much older than ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old dress, dear; it's so plain an' dowdy. I've somethin' better than that;' and, looking as pleased as a young girl at his interest in her dress, she went off nodding and smiling at the thought of the pleasure she was going to give him at sight ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... the dowdy girl, And the rowdy girl, And the girl that's always late; There's the girl of style, And the girl of wile, And the girl with ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Allan fine! Of course, in a way, it's too bad—doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his heart upon—and he knows it, too—but he's going calmly ahead as if the day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, martyrs are so dowdy and out-of-date—but there he is, a great, noble, beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... speech, delicacy of physique and sentiment, captivating clothes, and all those distinguishing characteristics which have tended to fasten upon the female sex the epithet of gentle. It will generally be admitted that women of homely presence, clumsy in their gait, dowdy in their dress, and raucous in their intonation, are much safer from the infliction of gallantries at the hands or lips of mortal men than those whose attributes are more pleasing; and it is safe to assert that many a male monster has been rooted to his seat in ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... mild and prepossessing face; and a pretty little figure—slight and short, but remarkable for its neatness. There was something of her brother, much of him indeed, in a certain gentleness of manner, and in her look of timid trustfulness; but she was so far from being a fright, or a dowdy, or a horror, or anything else, predicted by the two Miss Pecksniffs, that those young ladies naturally regarded her with great indignation, feeling that this was by no means what they had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... must be tall and handsome, with red, fashionable hair, and cool, offhand manners. She must never look shy or put out, or as if she did not know what to say. On the contrary, she must know who's who, and what's what, and never wear a dowdy bonnet, but always a stunning hat. And she must have a father who can give her something handsome when she is married. That's my mother's girl for me. I can't bear to look such a girl in the face! She makes me ashamed of myself and of her. The sort I want is one that grows prettier and prettier ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"— "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?" Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see, There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree, An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind, An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... than I danced, and the fib would have pleased me immensely; we women like to hear ourselves praised for accomplishments we don't possess. No, my dear, rule art out of the cast and substitute advertisement. Did you notice a dowdy creature who was lunching with two men on your right? She wore a brown Tussore silk and a turban—well, she writes the 'Pars About People' in 'The Daily Journal.' I'll bet you a pair of gloves that you will see something like this in to-morrow's ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... day.—Yes, of course, I said "all day." You know very well they have days and nights here, because this restless little planet spins, or something of the sort.—I haven't the least idea why it does so, and I don't care.—I did not come here to make intelligent observations like a dowdy "Seeing Saturn" tourist. So don't be Uranian. Try to exercise intuitive perception if I say anything you can't understand.—What is that?—Please concentrate a little harder.—Oh! Yes, I have seen a lot of human beings already, and would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... round me—everything, at such a crisis, seeming to make for it at once. The Boon Children, conveyed thus to New Brighton under care of a lady in whose aspect the strain of the resolute triumphed over the note of the battered, though the showy in it rather succumbed at the same time to the dowdy, were already "billed," as infant phenomena, for a performance that night at the Pavilion, where our attendance, it was a shock to feel, couldn't be promised; and in gazing without charge at the pair of weary and sleepy little mountebanks I found the histrionic character and the dramatic profession ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the street he takes delight,— In the street from morn till night: Don't I tell the story right, Rowdy-dowdy, noisy sprite? ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... don't think you will ever be disappointed in that hope; but surely you wouldn't like to be a poor man's wife and live in the suburbs? Just think what it would be if you could not hunt or ride in the Row in a beautiful habit or have wonderful dresses from Worth! You would hate to be dowdy and obscure!" ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... proud as an arch-duchess! Handsome, sir? handsome, sir, as—as—oh, dammit, words fail me; but go, sir, go and ransack Olympus, and you couldn't match her, 'pon my soul! Diana, sir? Diana was a frump! Venus? Venus was a dowdy hoyden, by George! and as for the ox-eyed Juno, she was a positive cow to this young beauty! ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place in the hedge, but as different from the rest as a young girl in holiday attire among a crowd of dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying at home, equipped and ready for the 'Month of Mary,' of which it seemed already to form a part, it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments, a Catholic bush indeed, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... taking last, affectionate peeps at themselves in the long mirrors. Annesley took a last peep at herself also, not an affectionate but an anxious one. Compared with these visions, was she (in Mrs. Ellsworth's cast-off clothes, made over in odd moments by the wearer) so dowdy and second-hand that—that—a stranger ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... strong rounded chin and beautiful mouth. For his looks were wasted on a man; Michael wanted to see them repeated and softened in a girl. As his eyes rested contemplatingly on his companion's bent head and youthfully-lean figure, he began to visualize a very plain, dowdy sister. The "Good Lord, no!" probably meant that although Freddy was not the least vain of his own extraordinary good looks, he could not help exclaiming at the idea of his dowdy ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... appreciated the cost and understood his feelings. On such people, however, his Dresden china was thrown away. Joe and Mrs. Joe were much more in their way than the elegant University man and the well-bred mother, who was "a poor little dowdy," they all said. Therefore the fact had been forced upon Mr. Copperhead that his circle must be widened and advanced, if his crowning glories were to be appreciated as ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... bottle to be filled with gin, whose head barely reaches the counter, the gin-drinking charwoman to the left, and the quarrelsome gin-drinking Irish customers at the back. Everything in this picture reeks of gin; the only persons not imbibing it are the proprietor and his dowdy barmaids, whom I have no manner of doubt the artist ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... as that," said Ermengarde with a jealous look. "There's my dark blue serge, but it will look dowdy ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... as she left it off she lost her bounce, her colour, and her flesh. Gradually she shrank back to the old, slim, reticent pallor, with eyes a little too large for her face. And now it seemed her face was a little too long, a little gaunt. And in her civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby. And altogether, she looked older: she looked more than her age, which was only twenty-four years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather battered and deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of the trollops in her dowdiness—so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives decided. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... well-shod feet would do more than pass muster here, she reflected with satisfaction. Indeed, although she was more plainly dressed than most of the women present, she rejoiced to feel she did not suffer too much by comparison. Esther was never dowdy. She was not ashamed of her well-tailored coat and skirt, marron in colour—which went well with her eyes and hair—nor of her little new felt hat, purchased in Paris. Her small choker fur was of good stone-marten, even her gloves and the handkerchief peeping from ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... a change, and were staying at a big hotel there, a new idea came into her head. Partly it was from seeing so many smart-looking young women having a good time every minute of their lives, and feeling what was the use of being free to enjoy herself at last, with plenty of money, when she was dowdy and not so very young any more? (I could tell just what was in her mind by the wistful way she looked at gorgeous ladies who had the air of owning the world, with a fence around it.) And partly it was seeing an ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... those poor people, who are pinching themselves and wearing themselves out soul and body, trying to keep in the station where they belong, or used to. Poor Mrs. Mason is pale and nervous and wrinkled at forty, and those three poor girls, who spend their time making over their old dresses, are so dowdy- looking and uneasy that no man ever glances at them twice. It is such misery as that which I dread for you, Helen, and why I am talking to you. There is no reason why you should take upon you such sorrows; you have a clear head, and you can think for ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... great round cheeses, and little pats of golden butter, stamped with a rose, and jars of pickled cucumbers, and pots of preserved plums, and peaches, and barberries, tied down with tissue brandy papers; and loaves of "riz cake," and plates of doughnuts, and pans of apple dowdy, beside an earthen jar of rich English ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... were mostly women and all pretty and perfectly dressed, as even quite common people appear to be in America. I haven't caught sight of a dowdy woman since I came. None of their frocks hitch up in front and dip down behind, as you see people's doing if you are taken to a shop in Oxford Street or even sometimes in Bond Street; and their belts always point beautifully down at the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to eat: but men are immoderate in both, as in lust—they covet carnal copulation at set times; men always, ruinating thereby the health of their bodies. And doth it not deserve laughter to see an amorous fool torment himself for a wench; weep, howl for a misshapen slut, a dowdy sometimes, that might have his choice of the finest beauties? Is there any remedy for this in physic? I do anatomise and cut up these poor beasts, [247]to see these distempers, vanities, and follies, yet such proof were better made on man's body, if my kind nature would ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... her spell over me was broken, and we became friends. I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy and unbeautiful ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... figure and form of one of her country churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Beguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... a town; you will lose all your beauty in this desert. What have you to do with mountains? What satisfaction can your beauty give to a lot of cows? You ought to have been married long ago; not to any of these dowdy women hereabouts, but to some Greek girl; an Argive, perhaps, or a Corinthian, or a Spartan; Helen, now, is a Spartan, and such a pretty girl—quite as pretty as I am—and so susceptible! Why, if she once caught sight of you, she would give up everything, I am sure, to go with you, and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... appalling spectacle of the ten-year-old son of the refined and fashionable Trafaim dragging along a cart constructed of a sugar box and an old pair of perambulator wheels with no tyres, in which reposed the plebeian Frankie Owen, armed with a whip, and the dowdy daughter of a barber's clerk: while the nine-year-old heir of the coal merchant ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... she is marked out for one of those wonderful romantic fortunes that history now and then relates. 'Who, after all, was the Empress of the French?' Mrs. Light is forever saying. 'And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!'" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... when two gentlemen, strangers to the wondrous wit of the place, are cracking a bottle together at some inn or tavern at Salisbury, if the great Dowdy, who acts the part of a madman as well as some of his setters-on do that of a fool, should rattle his chains, and dreadfully hum forth the grumbling catch along the gallery; the frighted strangers stand aghast; scared at the horrid sound, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... waited on the stone steps of Miss Teeturn's boarding-house for the dowdy servant-girl's return—such dirty, unkempt steps as they were, and such a dingy door-plate, spotted with rain and dust, not like Malachi's, he thought—he could hardly restrain himself from beating Juba with his foot, a plantation trick Malachi had taught him, keeping time ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Wendover's. They were supposed to be woven on purpose for her. Her gowns were gowns of the old school, and lasted for years, smelling of the sandal or camphor wood chests in which they reposed for months at a stretch, yet, by virtue of some wonderful tact in the wearer, never looked dowdy ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the gay crowd was more admired or more noticed than "the bride," as she was still called, young Mrs. Kynaston. Helen had surpassed herself in the elaboration of her toilette. The country dames and damsels, in their somewhat dowdy home-made gowns, could scarcely remember their manners, so eager were they to stare at the marvels of that wondrous garment of sheeny satin, and soft, creamy gauze, sprinkled over with absolute works of art in the shape of wreaths of many-hued embroidered birds and flowers, with which the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... she's a dowdy thing, always trailing round with a book and those horrid children. No danger of his marrying her." And a derisive laugh seemed to settle ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... while others demanded "The lady!" Johnston turned to Miss Marvin, and there was a hush as the slight girlish figure—and she seemed very young—stood upright before us. She thrust back the unlovely bonnet, and her thin face was flushed; but when, clenching nervous fingers upon the dowdy gown, she raised a high clear voice, every man in the assembly settled himself to listen. Perhaps it was a chivalrous respect for her womanhood, or mere admiration for personal courage, and she had most gallantly taken up the challenge; but I think she ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... defoedation|; soilure[obs3], soiliness|; abomination; leaven; taint, tainture|; fetor &c. 401[obs3]. decay; putrescence, putrefaction; corruption; mold, must, mildew, dry rot, mucor, rubigo|. slovenry[obs3]; slovenliness &c. Adj. squalor. dowdy, drab, slut, malkin[obs3], slattern, sloven, slammerkin|, slammock[obs3], slummock[obs3], scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark[obs3], dust- man, sweep; beast. dirt, filth, soil, slop; dust, cobweb, flue; smoke, soot, smudge, smut, grit, grime, raff[obs3]; sossle[obs3], sozzle[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
