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Flounce   Listen
noun
Flounce  n.  The act of floucing; a sudden, jerking motion of the body.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flounce" Quotes from Famous Books



... a great thing. Imagine going home every night without wondering if your room is locked and the landlady sitting on your trunks at the top landing. You can just flounce into your nest any old time and know that everything is right there, unless one crafty girl has bribed the chambermaid for the key. You can never tell about those people. Why, I know one girl who kept stealing hairs ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... partner was the mayor himself. An air of joyful gravity lit up the municipal officer's face. He was enjoying the honor which the Princess had done him. His pretty young daughter, dressed, in her confirmation dress, which had been lengthened with a muslin flounce, a rose in her hair, and her hands encased in straw-colored one-button kid gloves, hardly dared raise her eyes to the Prince, and with burning cheeks, answered in monosyllables the few remarks Serge felt forced ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... while Henry said "Don't kick and flounce so, my little beauty. If there's any thing I hate, it's seeing girls make believe they're modest. That clodhopper Bill kisses you every ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... moment, then she got up weakly. "Doesn't look much like a wedding-dress now," she murmured. "It's no use doing anything to it. It's done for." She wiped the inkstand on a stained flounce before setting it on the table. "Now," she said, as though some one were present who would disapprove, "I give it to her good. I better fetch her in and have it done before they ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... sit there, and read, and sew, and watch the boats going by," she thought delightedly, "and I'll have little muslin curtains tied back with ribbons, and a flounce of muslin across the top. Oh, I shall love it up here! I shall never want to go out. It's nicer even than my room at father's, and ever so much nicer than ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... tell you. I found the shape for twenty-five cents at the village milliner's. I cut it down and sewed it up again into another shape. Then I hunted through the old 'Semi-Annuals'; you don't know what those are, do you? I found a piece of velvet that had been a flounce. I steamed it and covered the shape. Then I had to have some trimming. It came from an old evening cloak of my Cousin Jeannette's—a bit of gilt, a silk rose, some ribbon from—I can't tell you what it came from, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... no! I will take my chance; I would not write. Katie dear, I have torn all the flounce off my black and white dinner dress; you are so much more clever with your needle than I am, would you sew it on for ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... addressed a complaint to the Queen of the manner in which England was deserting them, Bolingbroke had their letter formally condemned by a resolution of the House of Commons. He was determined to bring this peace about, and the Dutch might "kick and flounce like wild beasts caught in a toil; yet the cords are too strong for them to break." (Report from the Committee of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... from the stone with an impatient flounce, and took up his box so suddenly that the teeth of all ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... an admirable dispassionateness, as if I were talking of some one else, as, armed in full panoply, I stand staring at my white reflection in a long mirror let into the wall—staring at myself from top to toe—from the highest jasmine star of my wreath to the lowest edge of my Brussels flounce. "If I were very fat, I might fine down; if I were very thin, I might plump up; if I were very red, I might grow pale; if I were—hush! here are the boys. I would not for worlds ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... cause for feeling generally exasperated, and who did not see in Mr. Rupert Landale, despite his good looks and his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers (nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence," measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his thin-skinned susceptibility was ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... heels that did not interfere with her enjoyment in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by beckoning her mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny where ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... honest lay! In her fond breast no prostituted aim, Nor venal hope, assumes fair friendship's name: Sooner shall Churchill's feeble meteor-ray, 430 That led our foundering demagogue astray, Darkling to grope and flounce in Error's night, Eclipse great Mansfield's strong meridian light, Than shall the change of fortune, time, or place, Thy generous friendship in my heart efface! Oh! whether wandering from thy country far, And plunged ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... they are rats!" said Heywood, in a voice curiously forced and matter-of-fact. "Flounce killed ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... in having a gorgeous home on Fifth Avenue with all these Carthage people rocking on the front porch. Probably some warm evening when Mrs. Hotel Vanderbilt was driving by in her new barouche, it would be just like Roscoe Detwiller to turn in at the gate, flounce down on the top step and sit there with his vest unbuttoned, and his seersucker coat under his arm, while he mopped the inside of ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes

... to mention marriage; but was always answered with a slap, a hoot, and a flounce. At last he began to press her closer, and thought himself more favourably received; but going one morning, with a resolution to trifle no longer, he found her gone to church with a young journeyman from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... N. edge, verge, brink, brow, brim, margin, border, confine, skirt, rim, flange, side, mouth; jaws, chops, chaps, fauces; lip, muzzle. threshold, door, porch; portal &c. (opening) 260; coast, shore. frame, fringe, flounce, frill, list, trimming, edging, skirting, hem, selvedge, welt, furbelow, valance, gimp. Adj. border, marginal, skirting; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to snatch his wig from between the apprentice's tongs, clap it on his head, ram his hat on the top of it, and flounce out at the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... comfort. One room with dove-gray walls dotted with white, and all other furniture of white enamel, had mahogany chairs of severe simplicity of design, with backs and seats covered with rose-strewn cretonne which extended in a box-plaited flounce to the floor. This was the only touch of color, save a water color or two, in a room overflowing with restfulness and that "charm which lulls to sleep." Willow chairs are pretty and appropriate, too. The screen, with its panels draped in harmony with other hangings, should ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... break upon and overwhelm us, if not carefully avoided. Our commander, therefore, as it approached nearer and nearer, ordered one of the ship's guns to be fired, to try if the percussion of the air would disperse it. This was no sooner done than we heard a prodigious flounce in the water, at but a small distance from the ship, on the weather-quarter; and after a violent noise, or cry in the air, the cloud, that upon our firing dissipated, seemed to return again, but by degrees disappeared. Whilst we were all very much surprised at this unexpected accident, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... flounce, and shawl, if there is no possibility of their being sold. Also all other fine articles return me, save the dresses which, with prices lowered, may be ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... near and stood on the other side of the little table. He would not look at her face, but he could see the red dressing-gown he knew so well. She trailed through life in that red dressing-gown, with its row of dirty blue bows down the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn flounce at the bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly about, with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards from bow to bow, noticing those ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... is white; and linseed oil, or Newark cider, may be a good phrase, though the former word cannot well be predicated of the latter. So in the following examples: "Let these conversation tones be the foundation of public pronunciation."—Blair's Rhet., p. 334. "A muslin flounce, made very full, would give a very agreeable flirtation ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... imprisoned essences exhale; To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers; To steal from rainbows ere they drop in showers A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs; Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, To change a flounce or ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered, on his ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... day of the first month that, sitting at her work and industriously cutting her scraps, her well-beloved sister Angelina proposed adding to the collection for the cushion two handsome lace veils, a lace flounce, and other laces, etc., which were accepted, and are accordingly in this medley. This has been done under feelings of duty, believing that, as we are called with a high and holy calling, and forbidden to adorn these bodies, but to wear the ornament ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... "That flounce of your mother's out of the room was certainly as much like old times as if the thing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or a flounce of peerless Point d'Alencon flung carelessly athwart the sheen of a wine-dark ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... and rustle of silk by the door—Mrs. Polkington did not wear silk skirts, only a silk flounce somewhere, but she got more creak and rustle out of it than the average woman does out of two skirts. An imposing woman she was, with an eye that had once been described as "eagle," though, for that, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... hooked a lovely carp. Play it, play it, said she: I did, and brought it to the bank. A sad thought just then came into my head; and I took it, and threw it in again; and O the pleasure it seemed to have, to flounce in, when at liberty!—Why this? says she. O Mrs. Jewkes! said I, I was thinking this poor carp was the unhappy Pamela. I was likening you and myself to my naughty master. As we hooked and deceived the poor carp, so was I betrayed by false baits; ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... but made of pine and painted like the table, and the side tables or consoles are made of a cheap round pine table which has been sawed in half, painted gray-green, and the legless sides fastened to the walls. The glass curtains are point d'esprit net with a deep flounce at the bottom and outside curtains are (expensive) watermelon pink changeable taffeta. There is a gilt mirror over a cream (absolutely plain) mantel and over each console a picture of a conventional bouquet of flowers in a flat frame the color of the furniture, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... could sweep the pavement, or lie in rich folds at the bottom of a carriage, unadorned by an imposing flounce that almost covered the robe; a little later, the one sober flounce was driven into obscurity by twenty coquettish small ones; and these were displaced by primly puffed bands; which gave way to fanciful "keys" running up the sides of the dress (where ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... A flounce on the corsage at the bust-line, another at the hip-line, and yet another at the bottom of the shirt, increases the impression of bulkiness most aggressively and gives a barrel-like appearance to the form of a stout woman that is decidedly ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... nor the tool-using animal of the Sage of Chelsea. For animals, too, have their tools, and man, in his visible flounces, has feathers enough to make even a peacock gape. Both my Philosophers have hit wide of the mark this time. And Man, to my way of thinking, is a flounce-wearing Spirit. Indeed, flounces alone, the invisible ones in particular, distinguish us from the beasts. For like ourselves they have their fashions in clothes; their peculiar speech; their own hidden means of intellection, and, to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... so quick a flounce that she nearly landed herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off the drainage of the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... by Slim's encounter with the cleanly Mrs. Allen. Slim stood with open mouth, watching Mrs. Allen flounce out of the room after Polly, who was trying in vain to suppress her laughter. Turning to the girl, he said: "Ain't ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... of the waters come forth from their oozy beds and play and flounce in the beams of the moon. Round the luminary of the night the stars lead up the mystic dance, and compose the music of the spheres. The deities of the woods and the deities of the rivers come out from their ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... is to tend the fair; Not a less pleasing, though less glorious, care; To save the powder from too rude a gale, Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale. . . . Nay oft in dreams invention we bestow To change a flounce or add ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... On their heads they wore the Tam o' Shanter-like cap of black stuff, common among these people, bound on with their long braids, and their coats were of the usual felt. Their skirts, homespun, were made with what we used to call a Spanish flounce. According to Baber, the Lolo petticoat is of great significance. No one may go among the independent Lolos safely save in the guardianship of a member of the tribe, and a woman is as good a guardian ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... pleading, "Now all together, boys." She had tripping steps and dainty kicks that went well with the melody. When she went off half a dozen men rose in their places, and aimed nuggets at her. She captured them, then, with a final saucy flounce of her skirt, made ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... weeks I raved deliriously; for two weeks I was doing the things I ought not to have done—in imagination. I took a young lady skating, and slipped down with her on the ice, and broke her Grecian nose. I went to a grand reception, and tore the point lace flounce off of Mrs. Grant's train, put my handkerchief in my saucer, and my coffee-cup in my pocket. I was left to entertain a handsome young lady, and all I could say was to cough and "Hem! hem!" until at last she asked me if I had any particular article ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... the spirit of love. Oh, that it could have remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... Nevertheless, though his urgency had been in the stead of the constable's stronger measures, they eyed him askance as he stood and sought to listen, with his hand on the door. The old woman turned around, her arms falling to her sides with a sort of flounce of triumph, her eyes twinkling beneath the shining spectacles set upon her brow among the limp ruffles of her thrust-back sunbonnet, a laugh of satisfaction widening her wrinkled face. "Thar now!" she chuckled, "Nar'sa jes' set it ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... is shown in that trifling piece of etiquette! By-and-by, after the proper interval, the ladies enter in morning costume, not a stray curl allowed to wander from its stern bands, nature rigidly repressed, decorum—'Society'—in every flounce and trimming. You feel that you have committed a solecism coming on foot, and so carrying the soil on your boots from the fields without into so elegant an apartment Visitors are obviously expected to arrive on wheels, and in correct trim for company. A remark ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... Castle, for the hunting season was over. A goodly company gathered from neighbouring shires, and Mistress Pen wick was the mark of all eyes in a sweeping robe of fawn that shimmered somewhat of its brocadings of blue and pink and broiderings of silver. She had decorously plaited a flounce of old and rare lace and brought it close about her shoulders and twined her mother's string of pearls about her white throat, the longer strands reaching below her waistband and caught low again upon the shoulder ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... length sor'row sol'emn scrape chime launch dur'ing hire'ling strange whilst morgue gib'bet tres'pass greet smart pledge bod'kin shil'ling perch badge gourd gos'ling mat'tock champ dodge schist lob'by ram'part drench brawl flounce tan'sy tran'quil squeeze dwarf screech lock'et cun'ning grist yawl spasm van'dal her'ring shrink grant starve ex'tra drug'gist copse spunk scalp ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... clad with classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black alpaca flounce. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... into two compact files in order to let you pass through. I can assure you that it made me feel quite impressed to see you, so slender, with your head back, and the whole of your poor frame borne at arm's length by that Hercules. I followed as fast as I could, but having caught my foot in the flounce of my skirt, I had to stop for a second, and that second was enough to separate us completely. The crowd, having closed up after your passage, formed an impenetrable barrier. I can assure you, dear sister, that I felt anything but at ease, and it was ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... usual variety, so easily made by placing a wooden packing box on its side. In this case have your carpenter put shelves inside for boots, shoes and slippers. The entire top is covered with felt or flannel, over which is stretched silk or sateen, in any colour which may harmonise with the room. A flounce, as deep as the box is high, is made of the same material as the top, and tacked to the edges of the table-top. Cover the whole with dotted or plain swiss. A piece of glass, cut to exactly fit the top of ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... John Woodstock and his sister was becoming animated, and their aunt, who never could understand the difference between a discussion and a quarrel, was listening anxiously, expecting every moment to see Marjory flounce out of the room at one door, and John at the other, in their respective furies. It began in this way: John had just read a notice of an extraordinary concert to come off the next week, and had pushed the paper over to Marjory, with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately, as if he were ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... plucked somewhere a large fan-shaped leaf, which she held parasol-wise, shading the blond masses of her hair, and hiding her gray eyes. She had changed her festal dress, with its amplitude of flounce and train, for a closely fitting half-antique habit whose scant outlines would have been trying to limbs less shapely, but which prettily accented the graceful curves and sweeping lines of this ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... you to come," said Ishmael, taking the little hand that lay idle against a flounce. She made no motion to withdraw it or to move away, and glancing up at her he saw there were tears in her eyes. As he looked they slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them, nor did she sob—she cried with the effortless ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... all wore very wide and rather short skirts, the petticoat worn exposed up to where a full over-skirt or flounce gave emphasis to their hips. The elder ones wore long-sleeved jackets and high-crowned hats, while the young ones wore what looked like low-necked jerseys tied together in front and their braided hair hung ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... tent was held down by blocks of snow or ice, helped by spare food-bags, which were all piled round on a broad flounce. Ventilators, originally supplied with the tents, had to be dispensed with on account of the incessant drift. The door of the tent was an oval funnel of burberry material just large enough to admit a man and secured ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... rip, 'n' Mrs. Fisher took John Bunyan for weeds. 'N' then Mrs. Macy just pounced on the last girl for her trundle-bed, 'n' Mrs. Jilkins was pretty mad at there bein' no more girls after the last one 'n' she give a sort o' flounce 'n' said 'Josephus,' 'n' Miss White give a sort o' groan 'n' said 'Fox' in a voice like death. 'N' then come the time!—Mrs. Davison was No. 12, 'n' every one knew it, 'n' every one 'd been lookin' at her from time to time 'n' she hadn't been lookin' at no one, only jus' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... a flounce that made her petticoats whisk like a mare's tail, and off to the kitchen, where she related the dialogue with an appropriate reflection, the company containing several of either sex. "Dilly-Dally and Shilly-Shally, they belongs to us as women be. I hate and despise a man as can't make up his ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... been swept away by a rise of the waters, so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy is not distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... been trying to eat with little success. Mr. Waverton's hat upon one chair, his whip upon another, and his cloak tumbled inelegantly over a third proved that he was not himself. For he was born to treat his clothes with respect. Mr. Waverton would be jumping up to look out of the window, flounce down again in his chair to drink wine and stare with profound meaning at the table, start up and stride to the hearth and glower down at its emptiness—and repeat the motions in a different order. He must be theatrical even without ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... troubles was rapidly drawing nearer to the mill, and soon, to her inexpressible delight, she saw Bob coming to meet her. She had heard the flounce, and, feeling more secure from her pursuer, had dropped her pace to a quick walk. No sooner did she reach Bob than, overcome by the excitement of the moment, she flung herself into his arms. Bob instantly enclosed her ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... national garb, as I had found to be the case with the Russian peasant girls. Her loose sack, of a medium but brilliant blue woolen material, fell low over a petticoat of the same terminating in a single flounce. Her long black hair was carefully braided, and fell from beneath an embroidered cap of crimson velvet with a rounded end which hung on one side in a coquettish way. Her neck was completely covered with a necklace which descended to her waist like ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... Moon, and, as I need hardly add, insured his life in the late Continental Insurance Company. But the Inghams find just as much in life as the Haliburtons, and Anna Haliburton consults Polly Ingham about the shade of a flounce just as readily and as eagerly as Polly consults her about the children's dentistry. They are all very ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... acquaintance, a friend as he called himself, entered; An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he, And he smiled as he looked at the venison and me. 'What have we got here?—Why this is good eating! Your own, I suppose—or is it in waiting?' 'Why, whose should it be?' cried I with a flounce; 'I get these things often'—but that was a bounce: 'Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, Are pleased to be kind—but I hate ostentation.' 'If that be the case then,' cried he, very gay, 'I'm glad I have taken this ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... to teach, Because you held the king of hearts; Fie, madam, leave these little arts." "That's not so bad as one that rubs Her chair to call the king of clubs; And makes her partner understand A matadore is in her hand." "Madam, you have no cause to flounce, I swear I saw you thrice renounce." "And truly, madam, I know when Instead of five you scored me ten. Spadillo here has got a mark; A child may know it in the dark: I guess'd the hand: it seldom fails: I wish some folks would pare their nails." While thus they rail, and scold, and storm, It ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... answer. She was mentally, for the hundredth time, putting on the black gown with the pink roses stitched all about the flounce, and piling up ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... quadrille, held a bottle in each hand and a wineglass in his mouth, and that made everyone laugh. In the middle of the quadrille they suddenly crooked their knees and danced in a squatting position; Aksinya in green flew by like a flash, stirring up a wind with her train. Someone trod on her flounce and Crutch shouted: ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... a TUNIC, STOLA, and PULLA. The stola was a loose garment, gathered in and girdled at the waist with a deep flounce extending to the feet. The pulla was a sort of shawl to throw over the whole figure, and to be worn out of doors. The ladies indulged their fancy for ornaments as freely as their ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... of burden and of the field partake of the general joy; as Thomson says, "Nor undelighted by the boundless spring Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep From the deep ooze and, gelid cavern roused, They flounce and tumble ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... being at the back. Take the first loop, and the centre stitch of the first scallop, on the needle, and work 1 s c to unite them, 3 c s, s c the next loop and centre stitch of the next scallop, o 4 c s, s c the next loop and centre of first scallop in next flounce together, 3 c s, s c next loop and next scallop, o * 4 c s, s c next loop and next scallop, 2 c s; take the next loop on the needle without the scallop, and s c once round it, 2 c s, s c the next loop and next scallop together; repeat from * ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown

... shirred wherever puff, frill, or shirring could possibly be placed. Her head was surmounted by a huge white chiffon hat, bedecked with three long but rather stringy ostrich feathers. A veil of pink chiffon, lavishly sprinkled with huge black dots, hung like a flounce from the hat brim to her shoulders and floated off in two airy streamers behind her. She wore all the jewelry that could be crowded on one small woman, and a very strong odor of perfume ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... personale, a verb personal, Concordat—ay, "agrees," old Fatchaps—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, Genere, i' point o' gender, numero, O' number, et persona, and person. Ut, Instance: Sol ruit, down flops sun, et and, Montes umbrantur, out flounce mountains. Pah! Excuse me, sir, I think I'm going mad. You see the trick on't though, and can yourself Continue the discourse ad libitum. It takes up about eighty thousand lines, A thing imagination boggles at: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... out of the room with a flounce of red draperies, and left James. He sat down beside a window and stared out blankly. The thought came to him, how many avowals of love and deathless devotion such a woman must have listened to. Her manner of receiving his made him think that there had been many. "It is quite proper," he thought ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... devoured his annual tale of maidens until he was slain by Theseus. Was there such a real palace of Minos as the Greek poets sung? The magnificent palace of the Cretan kings at Cnossus has been found, by Mr. Evans, with its friezes, its spiral ornaments, its flounce-petticoated women, its treasuries, and its tablets written in a script so old that it cannot yet be read, but which will be read as surely as scholarship leaves none of its riddles unsolved. The childhood of Greece, its mighty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... vital impelling thing to do, which should of course supply a good time as well as a desirable achievement. The inherited energy was demanding an outlet. She recalled the evening's entertainment—a paper chase with every room left littered and disordered, her lace flounce badly torn, her head thumping with pain, the latest dances, the inane music, the scandal whispered between numbers, the elaborate supper and favours, the elaborate farewells—and the elaborate lies about the charm of the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... pinafore for her doll out of a lace flounce of real old Venetian lace. Dilly said she found it on the floor. 'On the floor, indeed,' I said to her. 'You mustn't use real lace!' She said, 'Why not? It's a real doll!' Lately Dilly's got a way of answering back that I don't like ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress which she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material called "alpaca"), of a dark-brown color, with a neat pattern of little star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom of this dress was the only milliner's ornament which it presented—an ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to an elderly lady. The disguise of her head and face was the next object of her attention. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... you believe me," said Mrs. Penniman. "Haven't I always said what a few little touches would do for you?" Proudly she adjusted a filmy flounce to a better line. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... was not; you had but one rival; a very young lady, wise before her age; a blonde, with violet eyes. She was dressed in light mauve-colored silk, without a single flounce, or any other tomfoolery to fritter away the sheen and color of an exquisite material; her sunny hair was another wave of color, wreathed with a thin line of white jessamine flowers closely woven, that scented the air. This girl was the moon of that assembly, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... my heart! No grief so great As thinking on a happy state In misery. Ah, dear is power To female hearts! Oh, blissful hour When Blanche and Flavia, joined with me, Tri-feminine Directory, Dispensed in latitudes below The laws of flounce and furbelow; And held on bird and beast debate, What lives should die to serve our state! We changed our statutes with the moon, And oft in January or June, At deep midnight, we would prescribe Some furry kind, or feathered tribe. At morn, we sent the mandate forth; Then rose the hunters of the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... on you, for all you seemed so wrapped up in your own affairs. They think you feel pretty big, I guess, for Miss Pryor said she wasn't agoing to wait to be put down by you, but took particular pains to flounce past you, with her head turned the other way, and never pretending to know you was there. Mind, though, you don't say anything to anybody about it. I am one of that kind that don't believe in making mischief, and if there's anything I do dispise, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... was very good-natured, as Gruffy well knew, signed the order immediately; and, when she had it in her pocket, you may fancy what airs she gave herself. She was ready to flounce out of the room before the Queen herself, as now she was the wife of the RIGHTFUL King of Paflagonia! She would not speak to Glumboso, whom she thought a brute, for depriving her DEAR HUSBAND of the crown! And when candles came, and she had helped ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with a half sigh. "There, I guess that flounce will stay in place. I've sewed it over ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... person. They are made the width of the material, and eight nails deep. The piece is to be so doubled as to make two flounces; one four nails and a half and the other three and a-half deep. A case, to admit of tapes, is to be made one nail from the top, and the bottom of each flounce is to have a thick cord hemmed into it. When worn, the article is turned inside out. The materials are strong jean, ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... flowers," said he, giving me a bouquet. He took no further notice of my dress than was conveyed in a kind smile and satisfied nod, which calmed at once my sense of shame and fear of ridicule. For the rest; the dress was made with extreme simplicity, guiltless of flounce or furbelow; it was but the light fabric and bright tint which scared me, and since Graham found in it nothing absurd, my own eye ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... in, the way you do. Still, I can imagine it a little, imagine what it must be, to an out-door man like him, to be shut up in that one room, packed in with all the frilly duds Mrs. Opdyke has stuffed in around him. Really, I'd feel exactly like a mutton chop in a tissue-paper flounce, myself. The frills add to the ignominy. Why can't she let him have the good of all the bare, empty space he can get, even if it ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... the marquise's example. Here is my portrait: Overskirt of white illusion trimmed with fringe, and three flounces of blond alternating with the fringe; court mantle of cherry silk girt by a high flounce of white blond which falls over the fringe and is caught up by Marie Antoinette satin; two other flounces of blond are placed behind at intervals above; on each side from the waist up are facings composed ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... and Patsy hastily tore off the flounce of a dress to bind about the wound. Stair took off his coat and wrapped Whitefoot in it. But he was not easy, shaking his head and turning it about to indicate that he had some message which must be delivered immediately. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... on Eudoxia's bed with a desperate flounce. "They don't want it! What, in heaven's name, do they want?" she asked angrily. "I think it is time for you, aunt, to make yourself felt. You are as much interested in the bank as any of them, and as much entitled to speak. Go down there as a stock-holder ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... of rosy pastes, and pencils that made arched and inky lines; beings redolent of bitter almond, and violet toilette water; beings in doubtful corsets and green silk petticoats perfect as to accordion-plaited flounce, but showing slits and tatters farther up; beings jealously guarding their ten inches of mirror space and consenting to move for no one; ladies who had come all the way from Texas and who insisted on telling about it, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... explained Zoie. "Just as we were introduced, that horrid little Willie Peck caught his heel in a flounce of my skirt. I turned round to slap him, but I saw Alfred looking, so I patted his ugly little red curls instead. And what do you think? Alfred told me to-night that it was my devotion to Willie that first ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... a moment's bridling, she whirled back with an angry flounce of her draperies. "The gallery, then, dog! I shall reach my lord's ear from that, which will be an ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... this by the way. He came home this morning at his usual hour of four, wakened me out of a sweet dream of something else, by tumbling over the tea-table, which he broke all to pieces; after his man and he had rolled about the room, like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce into bed, dead as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket; his feet cold as ice, his breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face as greasy as his flannel night-cap. O matrimony! He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... of Kincaid's Battery (the latter at Mobile with new guns), all July and August he had been of those who looked down from such windows; looked down often and long, yet never descried one rippling fold of one gossamer flounce of a single specimen of those far-compassionated "ladies of New Orleans," one of whom, all that same time, was Anna Callender. No proved spy, she, no incarcerated prisoner, yet the most gravely warned, though gentlest, suspect ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... what is Atlantic City? It is a refuge thrown up by the continent-building sea. Fashion took a caprice, and shook it out of a fold of her flounce. A railroad laid a wager to find the shortest distance from Penn's treaty-elm to the Atlantic Ocean: it dashed into the water, and a City emerged from its freight-cars as a consequence of the manoeuvre. Almost any kind of a parent-age will account for Atlantis. It is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... changing, mem," said Miss Chickie. with brilliant sarcasm. "Our ladies is led in their fashions by a Nevada young person. We're improving most rapid—more rapid than I'd ever have dared to hope. Do you prefer a frill, or a flounce, mem?" ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... lengthened. The affrighted purveyor of ices sent off an express for the artist and his paint pot. He came, but unluckily not provided with any colour that would match the petticoat; the necessity, however, was too urgent for delay, and a flounce of blue was added to the petticoat of red, giving bright and shining evidence before all men of the immaculate delicacy ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn gasped by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. The latter was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty, she filled a great rocking-chair ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... Miss Flounce, the young milliner, blue-eyed and bright, In the front parlor over her shop, "Entertains," as the phrase is, a party to-night ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... matter? I told her not to bother her head about it, that when we got to New York, or even to Cincinnati or Louisville, I would buy her a whole shopful of dresses. She made no answer to that; but when I had the misfortune to tear her third flounce, she said, that if I went on in that way she would not have a whole gown left when she got to Louisville. 'With a whole one or none at all, Miss,' said I, 'you'll always be a charming creature.' That now was as pretty a compliment as ever was paid in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... archbishop's costume consists of a black robe, large white sleeves, white handkerchief, with square ends, hanging on the breast, and white wig. Queen Victoria's costume, if not procured at a costumer's, consists of a white satin or silk dress, with a long trail, and four flounces on the skirt, each flounce ornamented with a band of gold paper three inches wide, covered with open lace. The top of the waist and bottom of the sleeves decorated in the same manner. A belt of crimson velvet, covered with ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... of her house with an angry flounce. What in the world was all this noise about! zzz! zzz! then a thump and a bump and the strangest little noises, more like a falsetto squeak than anything else. This had been going on for the last minute, which is a whole hour for ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks

... spread a cloud upon it; not to weaken Job's faith, but to try Job's strength, and to show to men of after ages how valiant a man Job was. Faith, if it be strong, will play the man in the dark; will, like a mettled horse, flounce in bad way, will not be discouraged at trials, at many or strong trials: 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,' is the language of that invincible grace of God (Job 13:15). There is also an aptness in those that come to the throne of grace, to cast all degrees of faith away, that carrieth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a gown of soft white over a white satin slip. It should be cut low in the corsage, and have no sleeves. A touch of colour in the shape of loops of small pink roses at the foot, heading a triple flounce of white, and on the shoulders and around the top of the bodice. You know for a portrait, madame, you want no epoch-making effect. It should be quite simple, so that in the years to come it may still please ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... heard me extravagant in the praises of the situation. he has demolished all his paternal intrenchments of walls and square gardens, opened lawns, swelled out a bow-window, erected a portico, planted groves, stifled ponds, and flounce himself with flowering shrubs and Kent fences. You may imagine that I have a little hand in all this. Since I came hither, I have projected a colonnade to join his mansion to the offices, have been the death of a tree that intercepted ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... him ride away, and then flounced, oh, men do flounce at times, in spirit, if not in deed; and there would be no lack of the deed if only they wore skirts that could rustle indignantly in sympathy with the wearer—to his room. Plainly, Hank did not swallow the excuse any more readily than did ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... first a nimble flounce, the red moccasins, as if their wearer made a pivot of his head in the air, described a circular flourish aloft, and in a twinkle, there they were at the bear's flanks, each with a toe at one of our hero's naked heels. In another twinkle Sprigg felt himself clasped tightly around ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... a lady, every inch of her, as I have said, was a complete contrast to your missionary. Her dress had three colors; blue satin in front, wreathed across with a wreath of rosebuds and leaves over each flounce. Running up each side were other wreaths, fastening down the edges of a long train of white silk, that was fastened in a wide box-plait at the back of the neck, and swept away to the carpet, where it fell and floated like a snow-drift scattered over with roses, for ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... him he saw the valley he had remarked the evening before, with the streamlet winding like a silver ribbon in a green flounce. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... legs with a sudden flounce. "You put too serious an estimate upon love," he said. "You expect it to be the grand, over-mastering passion we read about. That was all well enough for the age of poetry, but this is the age of prose. You can go to that man and tell ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so little room ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... XIII., her husband died, and her court was famous for its cleanliness and its Spanish point. Colbert had three women as coadjutors when he started lace-making in France. It was because Josephine loved point d'Alencon that Napoleon revived it. Eugenie spent $5,000 for a single dress flounce, and had ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... whisper of defeat. She stood before Flora Le Pettit like a wilted rose whose petals hang limply, about to fall, fronting a bloom that spreads its glowing leaves in the full flush of noon. The one girl was triumphant in her beauty and her unassailable position, every flounce out-curved in freshness; the other drooped at brow and hem, her slender neck downbent, her sash-ends pendant as broken tendrils after rain upon her heavily ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... ocean with a head, Like troubled table-beer—and make it bounce, And froth, and roar, and fling—but this, I've said, Surged in scarce rougher than a lady's flounce: But then, a grander contrast thus it bred With the wild welkin, seeming to pronounce Something more awful in the serious ear, As one would whisper that a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... suspense, to continue, and to raise their voices; then, perceiving that no one was listening, he had stopped them; and, during the entire quarter of an hour that the interruption lasted, he had not ceased to stamp, to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette and Lienarde, and to urge his neighbors to the continuance of the prologue; all in vain. No one quitted the cardinal, the embassy, and the gallery—sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays. We must also believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... and remained in bed reading an agreeable novel. Once more the four friends retired to the library where Mary read aloud and the others engaged in various characteristic pursuits. Elinor was embroidering a royal coat-of-arms in colored silks on a cushion cover; Nancy was darning a rent in a lace flounce and Billie was darning her father's socks. This task she undertook each week with extraordinary cheerfulness, although Onoye had offered to do it for her, and O'Haru had almost taken the darning needle and egg from her ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... disappearance of each fresh article, Pip used to ask whether the corduroy-trousered gentleman had been to the house the night before. And as it always happened, that he had, Martha could do nothing but cast a wrathful glance at the boy and flounce ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... moulded by nature to give elegance of form to a kid glove, is "stinted of its fair proportion" by grubbing toil. The foot which might have excited the admiration of a ball-room, peeping under a flounce of lace in a satin shoe, and treading the mazy dance, will grow coarse and broad by tramping in its native state over toilsome miles, bearing perchance to a market town some few eggs, whose whole produce would not purchase the sandal-tie of my lady's ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover



Words linked to "Flounce" :   walk, jabot, peplum, furbelow, ruffle, goffer, frill



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