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Leer   Listen
noun
Leer  n.  
1.
The cheek. (Obs.)
2.
Complexion; aspect; appearance. (Obs.) "A Rosalind of a better leer than you."
3.
A distorted expression of the face, or an indirect glance of the eye, conveying a sinister or immodest suggestion. "With jealous leer malign Eyed them askance." "She gives the leer of invitation." "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books



... odorous of villainous drugs and combinations of drugs, and, untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach of daylight, and in his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to belie ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... superstitious mind, had here assumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... hesitation. But after I had crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It was covered ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But this ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... marvellously constituted nature—and the shrill dissonance of his nerves, as seen in the physiological outbursts of the B minor Scherzo, is the agony of a tortured soul. The piece is Chopin's Iliad; in it are the ghosts that lurk near the hidden alleys of the soul, but here come out to leer ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... you begin to taste the pleasures of independency; or whether you do not sometimes leer upon the Court, sculo retorto? Will you now think of an annuity when you are two years older, and have doubled your purchase-money? Have you dedicated your opera, and got the usual dedication fee of twenty guineas? ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... get married, eh?" said Mr. Wurley, with another leer and oath. "You're right; that's a deal safer kind ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... no harm comin' to y'u, lady, while I am with y'u," said the fellow, with a hateful leer that made Stella shudder. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... you laugh too, and all laugh. He sings absurd medleys for which you improvise absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing and dispensing the jolly red wine. All grow rapidly merry, and ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... and jaw and mouth were drawn and seamed and scarred in a frightful and hideous manner, the teeth protruded and the mouth was drawn to one side in a frightful leer; above that was all the beauty of "My Lady ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... say, And every night the gaping people pay To see him in his panoply appear; To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer, Puff his perfecto, swill champagne, and sway Just like a gentleman, yet all in play, Then bow himself off stage with brutish leer. ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... Noll paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode into ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... at 11 a.m. (six), "Leer ons alzoo onze dagen tellen" ("So teach us to number our days"); afternoon, 4 p.m. (six), "En de dooden werden geoordeeld uit hetgeen in de boeken geschreven was, naar hunne werken" ("And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... off the show I must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to do with ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... their applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig's head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling voice ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... little attention to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... me! kill me! Shoot me if—you want to, but let me down from here!" The only effect of this upon Barrett was to light up his brutal face with a leer of fiendish satisfaction. He said to the guards with ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... where he sat, Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... patched clothes and scant leather breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honor in nearly every class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school who had not stood at least ONCE in the corner of horrors, where hung a dreaded whip, and over it this motto: "Leer, leer! jou luigaart, of dit endje touw zal je leeren!" *{Learn! learn! you idler, or this rope's end shall ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... lifelike portrait of my Sen, Drawn by the hand of Death; each fleshless pate, Cursed with a ghastly grin to eyes unrubbed With love's magnetic ointment, seems to mine To smile an amiable smile like his Whose amiable smile I—I alone Am able to distinguish from his leer! See how the gathering coyotes flit Through the lit spaces, or with burning eyes Star the black shadows with a steadfast gaze! About my feet the poddy toads at play, Bulbously comfortable, try to hop, And tumble clumsily ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... An ugly leer came over the brutal face of the giant; "Oh, I ain't, ain't I? You think I'm drunk. But I ain't, not so mighty much. Jest enough t' perten me up a pepper grain." Then, turning to his companion, who was grinning in appreciation of the scene, he ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... signed to Josh to come and look. There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... till flushed and triumphant he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... two people sitting over there?" and he twisted eyebrows and mouth awry, with a whimsical leer of caution. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... stopped short in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... Smith; but these are the sort we have in India," he answered with an unpleasant leer. "The English people are more fortunate, for they have ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... interrogated, mildly added to his "No, sir" the explanatory sentence, "except finding him there when I went for my boots"; and Munger, the cad, added to his answer, "but I'll try to find out," with a leer and an oily smile, which Ainger felt strongly tempted to acknowledge by a kick as he passed back to his place. Stafford, painfully aware that he was one of the "mentioned" ones, looked horribly ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... be such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made use of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... stood guarding the door with a threatening aspect, which very much disconcerted Pee-wee. He was a scout and he was brave, and not panicky in peril or emergency, but the striped clothing and cropped head and stupid leer of the man before him made him seem something less than human. His terror was more that of an animal than of a man and his apparent inability to express himself save by the repetition of that one sentence frightened the boy. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... the suller," Jase remarked, his defiance weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a weak leer ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... returned the other, with a fresh leer, "for, as I answered you, the night is warm. Piaghe di Cristo! I am an ill man to contradict, my pretty gallant, and if I say the night is warm, warm it shall be though there be snow on ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as of honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her shudder, "whether she ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... bred writing hounds begin the cry, And honest folly echoes to the lie. O how I laugh, when I a blockhead see, Thanking a villain for his probity; Who stretches out a most respectful ear, With snares for woodcocks in his holy leer: It tickles thro' my soul to hear the cock's Sincere encomium on his friend the fox, Sole patron of his liberties and rights! While graceless Reynard listens—till he bites. As when the trumpet sounds, th' o'erloaded state Discharges ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... of a bird of prey over the face of the drowned man, upon whose eyelids she was placing penny-pieces, to keep them from opening; and her one eye was fixed on her work, its sightless companion showing white in its socket, with an ugly leer. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue, Which, when freely translated, the same did appear Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!" And as we drew near, In anger and fear, Bound hand and foot, Johnson Looked down with a leer! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... answered. "Monsieur is a man of sense," said one, with a maniac leer at his companion. "We will allow him to make merry at ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... world like a pepper-box afore he's gone half a mile. Those be yours in the far stalls, and since they were turned round I've won a bob of a gemman who I bet I'd show him two 'osses with their heads vere their tails should be.[11] I always says," added he with a leer, "that you rides the best 'osses of any gemman vot comes to our governor's." This flattered Jorrocks, and sidling up, he slipped a shilling into his hand, saying, "Well—bring them out, and let's see ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... shark, its triangular fin just above the surface, keeping two or three fathoms off, even with the boat, at which the monster every now and then, as he declared, gave a wicked leer. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... of these basement brothels invite the pencil of a Hogarth. Their bloated forms, pimpled features and bloodshot eyes are suggestive of an Inferno, while their tawdry dresses, brazen leer, and disgusting assumption of an air of gay abandon, emphasizes their hideousness and renders it more repulsive. Most of them have passed through the successive grades of immorality. Some of them have been the queenly mistress of the spendthrift, and have descended, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet in his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... friendly so should he, had she shed one tear he would have melted immediately; but she only looked him up and down disdainfully, and it hardened him. He said with a leer, "I ken what makes you hold your hands so tight, it's to keep your arms frae wagging;" and then her cry, "How do you know?" convicted her. He had not succeeded in his mission, but on his way home he muttered, triumphantly, "I did her, I did her!" and once he stopped to ask himself the question, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... Shirley! Harry of Shirley! Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him worth the finding," he added, suddenly turning upside down, and looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the hopes with which they had turned to him. "Should you know this minks of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... invited everywhere; though how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... company, a hungry crew whose brain only responded to the sight of a more or less good meal, showed much animosity to the luckless Gambara, and waited only till the end of the first course, to give free vent to their satire. A refugee, whose frequent leer betrayed ambitious schemes on Marianna, and who fancied he could establish himself in her good graces by trying to make her husband ridiculous, opened fire to show the newcomer how the land lay ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... eyes were rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a spiritual ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... noble part she had played in this century." At the close of the council the visitors, as the guests of the lady directors, were driven in tally-ho and carriages to the beautiful country-seat of the president of the board, Mrs. Van Leer Kirkman, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... grew livid with rage, and he clenched his hand with an oath, but hearing some of the boarders coming in to breakfast in the next room, he only hissed, with a terrible leer: ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... stood over for awhile and silently watched the stern face. There was not a shade of consciousness in its expression. He bent down and touched him. Still no movement. He shook him gently, then more roughly. He was like a log. Victor grinned with a fiendish leer. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... fruitless visits, a startling, most repulsive leer just showed itself in Ladford's face; but it disappeared as suddenly and wholly as a monster that has come up, horrid and hideous, to the surface of the sea, and then has sunk again, bodily, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it had never come, except ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... you about 'orses. I talk to nobody about 'orses except lords.' 'Well,' said I, 'I have been called a lord in my time.' 'It must have been by a thimble-rigger, then,' said the coachman, bending back, and half turning his face round with a broad leer. 'You have hit the mark wonderfully,' said I. 'You coachmen, whatever else you may be, are certainly no fools.' 'We ain't, ain't we?' said the coachman. 'There you are right; and, to show you that you are, I'll now trouble you for your fare. If you have been amongst the thimble-riggers you must ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... partisan of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that the system might ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... him with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call to deny it, for I was aiming to give ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... careful aim, his hands trembling one moment, but firm the next, as the kangaroo, bending downward with the side of its head to him and nearly on a level with the water, which rose in violent ebullitions consequent upon Shanter's struggles, seemed to have a peculiar triumphant leer in its eyes, as if it were saying: "Wait a bit; it is ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope and withdraw ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... to with a few jeers and a good many dark, threatening looks. Tinville himself had bowed to him with mock sarcasm and an unpleasant leer. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... elder, I said, "The chief of Kingaru has called me a rich sultan. If I am a rich sultan why comes not the chief with a rich present to me, that he might get a rich return?" Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, there is no matama in the village." To which I replied that since there was no matama in the village I would pay him half a shukka, or a yard of cloth, which would be exactly equivalent ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... a little dried-up mummy of a man, the ugliness of whose countenance was, as it were, emphasized by a disagreeable leer which would ever and anon deepen into a broad grin; this man, with his dreary jokes and vapid small-talk, was equally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what shall hinder him from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... nearly the whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... story after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... stationed herself in the entrance where she had a view of both men, saw the cruel leer that accompanied Walcott's words and understood their significance as her father did not. Her hand sought the bosom of her dress for an instant, then dropped quietly at her side, but swift as the movement was, her companion had seen in the dim light the gleam of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... repeat."—"Nay, but," cries Miss Matthews, "I insist on your conquest of that modesty for once. We women do not love to hear one another's praises, and I will be made amends by hearing the praises of a man, and of a man whom, perhaps," added she with a leer, "I shall not think much the better of upon that account."—"In obedience to your commands, then, madam," continued he, "the doctor was so kind to say he had enquired into my character and found that I ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... was done, and the marriage-knot was tied, And Colt withdrew his blushing wife a little way aside; "Let's go," he said, "into my cell; let's go alone, my dear; I fain would shelter that sweet face from the sheriff's odious leer. The jailer and the hangman, they are waiting both for me,— I cannot bear to see them wink so knowingly at thee! Oh, how I loved thee, dearest! They say that I am wild, That a mother dares not trust me with the weasand of her child; They say my bowie-knife is keen to sliver ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... initiated, after years of wading through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... the great writer, becomes very bad in the little reader. We know what most of the novels were before Scott. We know the impurity, half-redeemed, of Fielding, the unredeemed impurity of Smollett, the lecherous leer of Sterne, the coarseness even of Defoe. Parts of Richardson himself could not be read by a woman without a blush. As to French novels, Carlyle says of one of the most famous of the last century that after reading it you ought to wash seven times in Jordan; but after ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... slip, with lots of jewels (sham), an immense colour in the very middle of the cheek, but terribly chalked just about the mouth, and shouting the "Soldier tired," with a most insinuating simper at the corporal of the Foot-guards in front, who returns the compliment by a most outrageous leer between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... breakfast. Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... Roman spoke loudly and stood waiting. Those others had heard the challenge and were now coming near. Antipater stood silent, glaring, as had the leopard, with an evil leer at his foe, and thinking no doubt of the warning of Augustus. The stiff, straight hairs in his mustache quivered as he turned slowly, watchfully, towards the others, who were now standing near. Since his funeral should occur on the same day, how ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... confirmed by beholding the patient's face break slowly into a horrible leer, and his mouth assume a diagonal slant, as he brought one hand in front, the index finger close to his nose, and ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... of fairness were accompanied by a cunning leer and a wink from one or other of his wicked little eyes, the impression of candour was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... pause, Drayton took the letter from the lawyer's hands, folded it carefully, and put it in his fob-pocket. Then he peered into Hugh Ritson's face with a leer of triumph. Bonnithorne had slunk aside. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... "If your cask is leer, I warrant your purse is full, gaffer," shouted Hordle John. "See that you lay in good store of the best for ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... merchants who thus gossiped was a young man, Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, by name, who, when Bernabo thus concluded his eulogy of his wife, broke out into a mighty laugh, and asked him with a leer, whether he of all men had this privilege by special patent of the Emperor. Bernabo replied, somewhat angrily, that 'twas a boon conferred upon him by God, who was rather more powerful than the Emperor. To which Ambrogiuolo rejoined:—"I make ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... he was to be successful; but the Frenchman, with a violent execration, suddenly let go his hold on the knob, the door swung in, and Dan fell back on all fours upon the floor. By the time he had recovered himself for another dash, he was confronted by Jean, a disagreeable leer upon his unpleasant countenance and a cocked ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... with distracted mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be all ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison

... dingy suit, somewhat of a Spanish fashion, with a brown laced cloak, and faded red stockings. He had long lank legs, long arms, hands, and fingers, and a very long sickly face, with a drooping nose, and a sly, sarcastic leer, and a great purplish stain over-spreading more than half ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... When they were at odds, as they usually were, they shouted "Barney Bluebeard!" after him, and ran away and hid in trembling delight as he shook his key-ring at them, and showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. Certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his attic room on any pretext. If he ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... stumbled On a green spot—sit linguae fides— 'Tis Suidas tells it—where Alcides Secure, as fearing no ill neighbour, Lay fast asleep after a "Labour." His trusty oaken plant was near— The prowling rogues look round, and leer, And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, How to bear off the famous Club; Thinking that they sans price or hire wou'd Carry 't strait home, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... with stare and leer. He comes with megaphone and specious cheer. His troupe, too fat or short or long or lean, Step from the pages of the magazine With slapstick or sombrero or with cane: The rube, the cowboy or the masher vain. They over-act each part. But at the height Of banter and ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... same," it said, with a leer and a contemptuous shrug. "You and I are inseparable. Aren't you glad?" it added, with a laugh that grated on every fibre of my being. I was too overwhelmed to reply, and it resumed: "It is one of the immortal stories. We agree to that. Published over your name, your name will live. The ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's 40 wife: I spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is, 'I am Sir ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... loud with the raucity of phonographs and the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks save such ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... his hands into the hip pockets of his striped trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a man named Benoit, who was regarding him ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... sat (and miserably enough) staring down at my jewelled buttons that seemed to leer up at me like so many small, malevolent eyes, upon the air rose a distant stir that grew and grew to sound of voices with the creak and rumble ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen to ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... favorably situated, an examination discloses many drawbacks. It needs better dock facilities and railroads to bring it up to standard and in order to relieve the extensive shipping of troops at Wilhelmshaven. Under existing circumstances Leer and Papenburg could be used for transporting purposes, and these two with Emden ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim

... found on the morning of the fifth engaged in smearing the paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... artillery-men chatted at doorsteps, with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the people of Alexandria were, in many cases, crushed ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... Macht von Stund zu Stund, Wie's Krueglein, das am Brunnenstein zersprang, Und dessen Inhalt sickert auf den Grund, So weit es ging, den ganzen Weg entlang,— Nun ist es leer. Wer mag daraus noch trinken? Und zu den ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... like those of a prophetess, and parted lips to the words of Plato, her face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women crowded round leer—Zoe having laid aside the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... nor cab, nor dray! The very Slop, That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop. Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell, His shriek of Winnur! But his dart and leer And poise are irresistible. PALL MALL Joys in him, and MILE END; for his vocation Is to ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... had been sitting just within the door, rose and came to his chief's side. Jose felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped outside and took his arm. The Alcalde's unlovely face expanded in a sinister leer. "It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if he becomes loco," he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... glad to consent to it," he said, "is the sodden depravity of that Floud chap. Really he's a menace to the community. I saw from the degenerate leer on his face this morning that he will not be able to keep silent about that little affair of ours back there. Mark my words, he'll talk. And fancy how embarrassing had you continued in the office for which ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... and cordial among the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... came over toward Rex, walking a little unsteadily, and with such a leer in his eye that Rex shrank ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... in the Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and friends, to be together whilst I made an announcement ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... grow in one night like mushrooms,' he said with a leer. (There was no mistake about his voice—it was Ombos; the words rang through my brain as if they had been shouted.) 'You can't expect a statue to turn into a god in a breath, or to come down and skip about ... ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... rose and turned With sideway leer; and printing with vague step Irregular the shining sands, on strode Toward his cold home, alone; and saw by chance A little bird light-perched, that, being sick, Plucked from the fissured sea-cliff grains ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... quarterdeck at this dismissal, but as he put one leg over the gangway to get down to his boat, he said in a hoarse voice, and with a sly leer in his dark eye: ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... corridor, to receive the benefit of fresh air. Here he remains some twenty minutes, stretched upon two benches, and eyed sharply by the vote-cribber, who paces in a circle round him, regarding him with a half suspicious leer, and twice or thrice pausing to fan his face with the drab felt hat he ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... their hands in their pockets, doubting whether to hear him to the end or to take their wonted way to the public-house. One moment their eyes would be fixed upon him, filmy, unintelligent, then they would look at one another with a leer of cunning, or at best a doubtful grin. Socialism, forsooth! They were as ready for translation to supernal spheres. Yet some of them were attracted: 'percentage,' 'interest,' 'compound interest,' after all, there might be something in this! And perhaps they gave their names ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... and therefore I softened it down. "You hear me say, Mr. Moss, that I'm an engaged young woman. Knowing that, you oughtn't to speak to me as you do." "Why, what do I say?" You should have seen his grin as he asked me; such a leer of triumph, as though he knew that he were getting the better of me. "Mr. Jones wouldn't approve if he were to see it." "But luckily he don't," said my admirer. Oh, if you knew how willingly I'd stand at a tub and wash your shirts, while ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... it on the line, his face a leer. "We are offering you a three-way partnership, Mathers. You, with your Medal of Honor, are our front man. Mr. Demming supplies the initial capital to get underway. And I ..." He twisted his mouth with evil self-satisfaction. "I was present when the Kraden ship was discovered, ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the messenger minute instructions and a liberal gratuity, Carter dismissed him and the despatches from his thoughts. Later in the day he was to be reminded not only of them but of the evil leer bestowed by Johann at the munificent tip dropped into his ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... back in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed, in the beady, ratlike eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated gaze, half as though trying to read some sign of weakness in the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... celebrated) are encased in lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent Club," where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to whom he tells astonishing ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join his pastime. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... it at night, my dear Prince," put in Doola, with a leer. "The clattering of the shields ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood

... Hardin," said Sumpter, with a savage, revengeful leer on his countenance, as he went out, slamming the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... and obeyed the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... pain appeared between the Professor's eyes—but he stood his ground defiantly. "Yes," went on Bunker thrusting out his jaw in a baleful leer at his rival, "for many years he has had the proud distinction of being the Champion Rough-Riding ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... dark, silent city, asleep save for the night clerks, the gendarmes, the evildoers, and the merrymakers. And these last would only leer at him. If he did not join them, then it was his fault if he ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... of a red fox," said Lincoln Lang long after, "for, besides having a marked carroty complexion, there was a cunning leer in his face which seemed, as it were, to show indistinctly through the transparency of the manufactured grin with which he sought to cover it. When he got mad over something or other and swept the grin aside, I do not think that an uglier countenance ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... as much surprised at what we are going to do as the manner in which we are going to do it," replied Duval, with an evil leer. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes

... weak woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... been occupied by George IV. when Prince of Wales. "Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!" added the professor of the whip, with the leer ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... talk to you," insisted Anthony with a leer. "Firs' place, my wife wants nothin' whatever do with you. Never did. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... in the paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... REBECCA! has your father, Think you, made a deal of brass?' And she answered: 'Sir, I rather Should imagine that he has.' UWINS, then, his whiskers scratching, Leer'd upon the maiden's face; And her hands with ardor catching, Folded ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved. Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance. But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type. It has been remarked that after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant victories. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... said the man. "Glad to see a new customer, sir." He pocketed the money, and showed them, out, standing to look after them with a malicious leer as they disappeared, and jerking his left thumb ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... day in the week but I carry coals from Croydon to London; and now, when I rise in the morning to harness my horses, and load my cart, methinks I have a tailor sewing stitches in my heart: when I am driving my cart, my heart that wanders one way, my eyes they leer another, my feet they lead me, I know not whither, but now and then into a slough over head and ears; so that poor Grim, that before was over shoes in love, is now over head and ears in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated at the holy supper, show him to be capable of any wickedness. What a spectacle when the traitorous lips are pressed against the pure cheek of the Immaculate One, the disgusting smack desecrating ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... saw, even in the all-pervading darkness, the shadowy face that was pressed close to his own. The eyes that looked into his were dim pools of evil light, faintly phosphorescent like those of a cat, and the face that framed them was contorted into a malignant leer of triumph. That much he saw before the darkness crushed him out of existence and all things earthly faded ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... has been dreaming much of this hero of late. His name is Gerald Van Alstyne, and he is tall, with curly golden hair, piercing blue eyes and a cleft chin; in short, a veritable Adonis and different, so different, from the traveling salesmen who leer at her across the counter and the loutish youths of San Pasqual who, despairing of her favor, call her by her first name because they know it annoys her. Donna has not the slightest doubt but that this young fellow will come rushing in to the eating-house ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you, and before parting with the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... to saddle, and from saddle to bottle, my Lord. We must have our pleasure ashore, and sleep at sea," and the captain tipped his flask with a leer. He turned his eye uncertainly first on me, then on my Lord. "We are lately from Boston, gentlemen, that charnel-house of treason, and before we leave, my Lord, I must tell them how Mr. Robinson of the customs served that dog ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... became almost a leer and then stiffened into a sneering defiance as his gaze met the clear gray eyes of the physician, impersonal, professional, unresponding. The doctor's chin rested upon his locked fingers and his eyes were fastened upon the other's face. Brand did ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... harvest-folks, and John, "Came in and look'd askew; "'Twas my red face that set them on, "And then they leer'd at Sue. ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield

... solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was arched and old—older even than the house itself. The door was studded, and the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... on one side and an impudent leer. 'We are interrupting the turtledoves, Mr. Thomasson, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... calm exterior—the face of the man who lifts a heavy dumb-bell and throws an impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success I saw him put a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded toward him, extending the hand of congratulation. "Mr. Hilbrun," said he, "I am Judge Burrage—the Honorable T. Coleman Burrage—and I will say that I am most favorably ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... room alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. His humility and deference ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley



Words linked to "Leer" :   facial expression, contempt, sneer, aspect, leery, look



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