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Upstart   Listen
noun
Upstart  n.  
1.
One who has risen suddenly, as from low life to wealth, power, or honor; a parvenu.
2.
(Bot.) The meadow saffron.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books



... all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... he obtained all these facts from Moore's own lips. He was, however, a sarcastic, discontented writer; and being what was called an upstart, he was supposed to have a malice against kings and courts. For such reasons as these, his narrative was distrusted until its fundamental character, at all events, was confirmed by the late discovery of a bundle of letters addressed by the king to Sir George ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... an insolent, pragmatical young cock-a-hoop upstart; and hang it, I should like to spread-eagle him till he came ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... been ready to patronize the upstart who had ventured so boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the clear-cut resolute face of the young ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... Barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the "upstart" Makololo. One of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... the emperor at the foot of the palace staircase, where only an hour ago he had assured his courtiers he would not receive the upstart Napoleon as an equal and shake hands with him; but as Napoleon now saluted him with a kind nod, and gave him his hand, the elector bowed so deeply and respectfully that it almost looked as if he wished to kiss the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... power; that arm itself directed by the ambitious spirit of a Byzantine bishop, who not only named the holders of the second and third seats of the Church, but reduced them to do his bidding, and wait upon his upstart throne. Gaul was in the hand of princes, mostly Arian, one pagan. Spain was dominated by Sueves and Visigoths, both Arian. In Africa Simplicius during forty years had been witness of the piracies of Genseric, making the Mediterranean insecure, and ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... fixed that. And I've bought her notes against Mrs. Hawley-Crowles for about a million—which I have reinvested for her in Colombia. Humph! She'll feed out of my hand now! La Libertad is mine when the trap falls. So is C. and R. And that little upstart, Ketchim, goes ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... he began the fight, and there was an incessant cannonade from start to finish against the upstart boy nominee, who proved to be an adversary of unremitting activity, the tact and experience of Knowles making a fortified intrenchment for him. All of David's friends rallied strongly to his support. Hume came from Washington, Joe from the ranch, and ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... politeness a profound antipathy to the conqueror. It required almost a formal order from her husband to bring her to Dresden. She was then a pretty woman, twenty-four years old, witty, and proud of her birth and her crown. Napoleon she looked on as an upstart, a vainglorious adventurer, the cause of all the humiliations inflicted on the Austrian monarchy; and the splendor which surrounded the hero of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Wagram, aroused in her a resentment all ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... for La Meronville, the loss is a gain; and, thank Heaven, I did not betray myself by venting my passion and making a scene. But it was I. who ought to have discarded her, not the reverse; and—death and confusion—for that upstart, above all men! And she talked in her letter about his eyes and words. Insolent coxcomb, to dare to have eyes and words for one who belonged to me. Well, well, he shall smart for this. But let me consider: I must not play the jealous fool, must not fight for a ——, must ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... how we improved this standing by prodigious energy into the position of a conquering state; prospered rapidly by the opposition which we met; overthrew even our European competitors, of whom the deadliest were the French; pursued a difficult war with an able Mahometan upstart, Hyder Ali—a treacherous and cruel prince; next with his son, Tippoo Sahib, a still more ferocious scoundrel, who, in his second war with us, was settled effectually by one thrust of a bayonet in the hands of an English soldier. This war, and the consequent division ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... partition was made. But as one line of the Heracleid kings was extinct, Cleomenes made his brother Euclidas reign with him, and was able to bring back all the old ways of Lycurgus, the hard fare and plain living, so that those who had seen the Eastern state of the upstart Macedonian soldiers wondered at the sight of the son of Hercules, descendant of a line of thirty-one kings, showing his royalty only in the noble simplicity ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in the land that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered the little copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that he was beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for the cattlemen of Lost Valley, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; - Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But ALL must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share, - I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... themselves released from the constraints of all law. They harbored jealousy and distrust of the admiral as a foreigner. The cavaliers and hidalgos, of whom there were too many in the expedition, contemned him as an upstart, whom it was derogatory to obey. From the first moment of their landing in Hispaniola, they indulged the most wanton license in regard to the unoffending natives, who, in the simplicity of their hearts, had received the white men as messengers ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... him to the presence and entreat him with honour and give him a jewel which I have. An he know it and wot its price, he is a man of worth and wealth; but an he know it not, he is an impostor and an upstart and I will do him die by the foulest fashion of deaths." So he sent for Ma'aruf, who came and saluted him. The King returned his salam and seating him beside himself, said to him, "Art thou the merchant Ma'aruf?" and said he, "Yes." Quoth the King, "The merchants declare that thou owest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... were upstart continents, werent they? I am not speaking sarcastically, my point is not a chauvinistic one, not even hemispherically prideful. And the Old World the womb of culture? But how much culture has that womb borne since the Americas disappeared? Without a doubt ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... irregularities of her long life, she bore, amidst her passion and her power, a stamp of courageous frankness and intellectual greatness which places her far above the savage who was her rival. Fredegonde was an upstart, of barbaric race and habits, a stranger to every idea and every design not connected with her own personal interest and successes; and she was as brutally selfish in the case of her natural passions as in the exercise of a power acquired and maintained by a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... just as it really has conquered him; and he will stand now on his blood and his pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly because puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes have squandered them, call him 'jack and upstart,' and make impertinent faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about 'how when jacks go up, heads go down.' Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built?' And ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... with wrath over the tidings that a new foreign prince was coming to America, and that Mrs. Ridgely-Clieveden had stolen a march upon her and grabbed him. He was to be under her tutelage the entire time, and all the effulgence of his magnificence would be radiated upon that upstart house. Mrs. Robbie revenged herself by saying as many disagreeable things about Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden as she could think of; winding up with the declaration that if she behaved with this prince as she ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... the west from those of the east. The Israelites poured over the Jordan out of Edom and Moab, and took possession of Canaan, while Babylonia itself, for so many centuries the ruling power of the Oriental world, had to make way for its upstart rival Assyria. The old imperial powers were exhausted and played out, and it needed time before the new forces which were to take their place could acquire sufficient ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... avenged by the slaughter or mutilation of nearly 2000 rebels. Theodore soon after married his second wite Terunish, the proud daughter of the late governor of Tigre, who felt neither affection nor respect for the upstart who had dethroned her father, and the union was by no means a happy one. In 1862 he made a second expedition against the Gallas, which was stained with atrocious cruelties. Theodore had now given himself up to intoxication and lust. When the news of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fall Of law that mesmerizes all - Each subject unto each - Though all is well if all obey And all have humble heart, Nor dare to hold in cursed doubt Those gems of truth the church lets out; But where's the apple-cart, And where's the sacred fiction gone, And who's to have the blame When any upstart takes a hand And, scorning what the priests have planned, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... his air that is full of anger, of suppressed fury, gives her pause for thought. Her heart sinks. Is she to win or lose in this great game, the game of her life? Why should he look like that, when only the honour of that little upstart is ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... April 1527 Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, arrived in England to discuss the terms of an alliance. The position of Cardinal Wolsey, which had been rendered critical by the hatred of the nobles, who resented his rule as the rule of an upstart, and by the enmity of the people, who regarded him as the author of the French war and of the increased taxation, was now threatened seriously by the public discussion of difficulties that had arisen in the mind of the king regarding ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... seen their father put no restraint upon his passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self- restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes—the sons of a shepherd boy—intoxicated with honours to which they were not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the most frantic licence. What is there that they may ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... the abominable Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison—to be exchanged—to die—anything rather than be a traitor, and the tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in a fury; and flinging open the door tumbled over Cambaceres, who was listening ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Frate Stefano, son of Niccolo Piovano da Bagnore. The former was exasperated against Lorenzo for the reckless sack of Volterra, and because he had taken possession of a valuable alum-pit belonging to his family. The latter was Vicario of Monte Murlo, an upstart Papal precis-writer, whose family was plebeian and employed upon Pazzi property in that locality; he was "a man steeped in crime and a creature of Cavaliere Giacopo ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... condition are not allowed to carry arms. What would a lord say—yes, or any other person of whatever condition —if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... advanced to a position as procurator. Now although old age prevented him from seeing, lack of education from reading, and want of experience from being able to accomplish anything, the emperor made him senator, fellow-consul, and prefect of the city. This upstart had dared to say to the soldiers after the death of Caracalla: "The sovereignty properly belongs to me, since I am elder than Macrinus: but inasmuch as I am extremely old, I make way for him." His behavior was regarded as nonsensical, as was ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... agreed heartily. "It seemed to us that his trying to make us put aside the respect due to his rank was a sort of affectation, and really impressed it more disagreeably upon us. We took him for an upstart favourite; though we might have known, had we thought of it, that the king never promotes unduly. Who could possibly have believed that a young fellow, not yet twenty, I should say, could have so distinguished ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... and rather bewildered when they see Germany cutting in ahead of them, especially in the commerce of the Orient; any Englishman "east of Suez" can give a dozen good reasons why Germany is an incompetent upstart; but however satisfactory and soothing to the English soul this line of philosophy may be, it drives no German merchantmen from the sea and no German drummers from the land. The supineness of the British in the face of the German inroads into their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... not at all abashed, said that he meant not Sophocles, but Euripides. Whereupon Porson drew from another pocket a copy of Euripides and challenged the upstart to find the quotation in question. Full of confusion, the fellow thrust his head out of the window of the coach and cried ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... growled McQuade. "Well, I'll break him, or my name's not McQuade. The damned meddling upstart, with his plays and fine women! You're a hell of a dog, you are! Why the devil didn't you kill his pup ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... he had many, especially among the nobility, who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this incident to bring him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic, they declared, and they demanded that he be degraded and fined. His defence, which with all the records of his career are in the Navy Department at Copenhagen, was ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... your favor. It is sad to read that when icy winter chilled the blood, warm partisanship of old friends also cooled, and innovative Windsor youth carried the day and the music vote, and your good old way was abandoned for half the Sunday services, to allow the upstart new fashion ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... exchang'd for tubs of ale? Not but they thought me worth a ransome Much more consid'rable and handsome, 550 But for their own sakes, and for fear They were not safe when I was there Now to be baffled by a scoundrel, An upstart sect'ry, and a mungrel; Such as breed out of peccant humours, 555 Of our own Church, like wens or tumours, And, like a maggot in a sore, Would that which gave it life devour; It never shall be done or said; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... words. And fair words enough had Frederick for the occasion. To think of such a man as HE, flaunting the banner of Germany in my face—he who, not many years ago, was under the ban of the empire as an ambitious upstart! He thought to scare me with the rustling of his dead laurel-leaves, and when he found that I laughed at such Chinese warfare, lo! he ran and hid himself under my mother's petticoats; and the two old crowns fell ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... shouted out, 'Well, here I am, the highest of all!' 'Not so,' answered the gold-crest, as, leaving the eagle's back, he fluttered upwards, until suddenly he knocked his head against the sun and set fire to his crest. Stunned by the shock, the little upstart fell headlong to the ground, but, soon recovering himself, he immediately flew up on to the royal rock and showed the golden crown which he had assumed. Unanimously he was proclaimed fuglekongen (king of the birds), and by this name," concludes the legend, "he has ever since ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... resource was only an ineffectual protection against the dangers which beset them. The kings were literally at the mercy of their guard, and their reign was entirely dependent on its loyalty or caprice: any unscrupulous upstart might succeed in suborning his comrades, and the stroke of a dagger might at any moment send the sovereign to join his ancestors, while the successful rebel reigned in his stead.* The Egyptian troops had no sooner ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... which she possessed in common with her kinsman, Pope Leo the Tenth, and all her house.[737] And it must be admitted that the idiosyncrasy had had a fair chance to develop during the five-and-twenty years she had spent in France, threatened with repudiation, contemned as an Italian upstart, suffering the gravest insult at the hands of her husband, but forced to dissemble, and to hide the pain his neglect gave her from the eyes of the curious world. Nor was her position altogether an easy ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... creatures. But our enemy the divell (who strives still to pervert our gifts, and beate us with our owne weapons) hath so contriv'd it, that any truth doth now seeme distastefull for that very reason, for which errour is entertain'd—Novelty, for let but some upstart heresie be set abroach, and presently there are some out of a curious humour; others, as if they watched an occasion of singularity, will take it up for canonicall, and make it part of their creede and profession; ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins

... injured in the nicest point a woman can be injured? Shall I lend my name to mockery and scorn, by base acknowledgment of such deceit, or will you? Where would be my honor, then, stripped of my fair estates—my son—myself—beggars—dependent on the bounty of an upstart? Does honor ask you to bear this? It is a phantom sense of honor, unsubstantial as your father's shade, of which you just now spoke, that would prompt you ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... physician or the motive of the science of medicine, is the one who appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... n'a ete bon a rien. It was on this occasion also that the deputies received from the imperial ruffian one of those insults which are so common with him, and which might indeed be naturally expected from such an upstart; for, when they assured him of the submission of the city, he dismissed them with these remarkable words: Allez vous en! than which nothing more contemptuous could be addressed to the ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... turn the tables upon their catch questions. But then it can't be the real article of learning, because He hasn't been in our established schools. He has no sheepskin in a dead language with our learned doctors' names learnedly inscribed. How indeed! An upstart!! ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... there are upstart ministers as well as City-turned gentlemen, I will remember Moliere's M. Jourdain, and feed full the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... means of making such enormous fortunes. Thus a new Nobility was formed, resting on wealth, and composed alike of plebeian and patrician families. Every one whose ancestry had not held any of the curule magistracies[53] was called a New Man, and was branded as an upstart.[54] It became more and more difficult for a New Man to rise to office, and the Nobles were thus almost an hereditary aristocracy in the exclusive possession of the government. The wealth they had acquired in foreign commands enabled them not ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... mean to be,' he answered, with added surliness. 'If the speech and the clothes and the vittles as have been good enough for me ain't good enough for any young upstart as may follow after me, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... Williams then. I won't have that damned rascal set foot in this house. You're a fool, Tuthill, to let that young upstart get all your practice as he's ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... without you and Margaret. All my old Oxford associations are gone. Oxford, instead of being, as it used to be, the magnificent old city of the seventeenth century,—still preserving its antique character among the improvements of modern times, and exhibiting in the midst of upstart Birminghams and Manchesters the same aspect which it wore when Charles held his court at Christchurch, and Rupert led his cavalry over Magdalene Bridge, is now to me only the place where I was so happy with my little sisters. But I was restored to mirth, and even to indecorous mirth, by what happened ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... nothing but a Petticoat Lane girl, after all. Its coarseness, its vulgarity underlay all her veneer. They had got into her book; everybody said so. Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of Raphael's people? She an upstart, an outsider? She went to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's history of the Jews, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back to the great dim drawing-room ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... subject was broached privately to the shrewd and worldly Andre, who on hearing it propounded swore indignantly at the advocate's audacity, and roundly refused to accede to any such appropriation of his substance: so after fierce denunciations of the insolence of upstart English adventurers, and censure of the infatuation of young fellows in affairs of the heart, the theme was dropped for the present, and the remainder of the day spent in looking over the estate, and in those attentions that are usually bestowed on a visitor, be he ever so familiar a one, much ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... to send himself, must in all likelihood have come through him.—For Bruce the elder had determined that in his son he would restore the fallen fortunes of the family, giving him such an education as would entitle him to hold up his head with the best, and especially with that proud upstart, Alec Forbes. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... I wanted to lead her to her place, and asked her if she would have a glass of negus, 'Sir,' says she, 'I have done my duty; I bear no malice: but I consider you a traitor to Sir George Gorgon's family—a traitor and an upstart! I consider your speaking to me as a piece of insolent vulgarity, and beg you will leave me to myself!' There's her speech, sir. Twenty people heard it, and all of her Tory set too. I'll tell you what, Jack: at the next election I'll put YOU up. Oh that woman! that woman!—and to think that I love ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly mother of strong and hideous children—progress. Motors ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... inflamed by this ironical repetition, the contempt of which his conscious poverty made him feel; and he called his antagonist presumptuous boy, insolent upstart, and with other epithets, which Perry retorted with great bitterness. A formal challenge having passed between them, they alighted at the first inn, and walked into the next field, in order to decide their quarrel by the sword. Having pitched upon the spot, helped to pull ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... it his business to know personages of high influence in every capital in Europe. Much of his success had already been gained that way. The methods of introduction had concerned him but little. For social purposes they could have been employed only by a pushing upstart; but in the furtherance of a divine mission the apostle does not bind his inspired feet with the shackles of ordinary convention. Sypher rushed in, therefore, where the pachyderms of Park Lane would have feared to tread. Just as the fanatical evangelist has no compunction in putting to an entire ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... young upstart," she muttered. "The idea of his telling me not to talk so loud! Ebenezer is altogether too pleasant ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey

... but as a result of his diplomacy the Tartars henceforward played an important part in the Bulgarian welter. Then Constantine married, as his second wife, the daughter of the Greek emperor, and thus again gave Constantinople a voice in his country's affairs. Constantine was followed by a series of upstart rulers, whose activities were cut short by the victories of King Uro[)s] II of Serbia (1282-1321), who conquered all Macedonia and wrested it from the Bulgars. In 1285 the Tartars of the Golden Horde swept over Hungary and Bulgaria, but it was from the south that ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... me out, Mr. Cludde, when I remind you that the owner of the estate had fled from her lawfully-appointed guardian, aided and abetted in her flight, I doubt not, by this upstart himself. I am ready to account for my administration of the property to Sir Richard Cludde, and to no one else, and I say you have no right to call in question anything I may ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... containing not a few cotton factories sprang up around St. Petersburg; and a small Polish village called Lodz, near the German frontier, grew rapidly into a prosperous town of 300,000 inhabitants, and became a serious rival to the ancient Muscovite capital. So severely was the competition of this young upstart felt, that the Moscow merchants petitioned the Emperor to protect them by drawing a customs frontier round the Polish provinces, but their ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... own family Paul had behaved in a most exemplary manner, affording thereby the strongest proof that though he had risen he was no upstart. The numerous members of his family and the men who had married into it nearly all had to thank him for their advancement or actual support. Some were employed on his estate, others he had trained in his particular branch of agriculture, after ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... waiting-woman's son, raising up his little eyes to his mistress! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood's widow! Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry's heart at the very notion; the honor of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. 'Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere, with WORTH and not BIRTH for a text: ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... man seemed smothered in his own volumes; and victual shops where you could almost feed yourself for two or three sous; and people sitting outdoors drinking wine, as if at a general festival. I thought Paris had comfort and prosperity—with hereditary kings overthrown and an upstart in their place. Yet the streets were dirty, with a smell of ancientness that ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... thoughts in my countenance, or not, I can't say; but, after most of the passengers had got out, he moved up to me and said, "Good boy—good boy—wasn't he? My dear, (and here his voice sunk to a confidential whisper,) I have got money enough to buy out all the upstart people that filled this omnibus, twenty times over, but I like this old coat and hat. They are as good as a crucible. Help me to find out the true metal. Good morning, my dear. Thank you for your pity, just as much as if I needed ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... the self-same press? Strange, that the bar was off the door, and, as I came to it, a fellow with a ream on his back laboured out. I had expected naught but the desolation and silence which I last remembered in the place, and it staggered me to find all going on as before. No doubt here was some upstart printer, standing in my late master's shoes and working at his ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... up for sympathy. She wished to be helped in her persistent efforts to get the better of this upstart blue man with the red cap, who serenely resumed his erect position just as often as he was forced to the ground. He was a stout, healthy-looking person, inclining to embonpoint; bound to succeed, if only from sheer solidity of person. Hadria was drawn into the game, and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... treachery he was loaded with wealth and honours; and when Augustus, next year, fitted out a naval expedition against Sextus Pompeius, Menas received a command. It was probably lucky for Horace that this swaggering upstart, who was not likely to be scrupulous as to his means of revenge, went over the very next year to his former master, whom he again abandoned within a year to sell himself once more to Augustus. That astute politician put it out of his power to play further tricks with the fleet, by giving ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... foolishly permitted them to see certain letters addressed to him by the eccentric Sir Laurence Altham, justifying himself concerning the peculiar clause introduced into his deeds of conveyance of his Hall estate, on the grounds of the degraded origin of "the upstart" he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... A RICH upstart once asked a poor person if he had any idea of the advantages arising from riches. "I believe they give a rogue an advantage over an honest man," was ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... have thee for ally. So, by our fountains and familiar gods I pray thee, yield and hear; a beggar I And exile, thou an exile likewise; both Involved in one misfortune find a home As pensioners, while he, the lord of Thebes, O agony! makes a mock of thee and me. I'll scatter with a breath the upstart's might, And bring thee home again and stablish thee, And stablish, having cast him out, myself. This will thy goodwill I will undertake, Without it I can scare ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... scarcely feel as if I cared enough about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... I dare not, because I look on myself as accountable to your ladyship and family. Now and then, when I have the honour to be called to the tables of the great, if I happen to meet with any mortification from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient squires, or the luxurious insolence of upstart nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling to remembrance that I am patronized by the noble house of Glencairn; and at gala-times, such as new-year's day, a christening, or the kirn-night, when my punch-bowl is brought from its dusty ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... and, in reading his nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?—we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thirteen years of its existence it produced a singularly interesting series of publications. The number of separate works registered in Bohn's Appendix to Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual is 94, besides "Quippes for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen by Stephen Gosson," which was suppressed, and "Rhyming Satire on the Pride and Vices of Women Now-a-days, by Charles Bansley," 1540, which was reprinted in 1841, but not issued. The set is much sought after, and fetches a ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... presumption, They would correct it in the sharpest sort: Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! Since from the first foundation of the world, We never were accounted more than five. Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame, Would fain increase the number, and upstart To our high seats, decking your babbling self With ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... "I'll show that upstart Corner House girl that she sha'n't ride over me," she declared, angrily, as the contestants gathered for the second trial ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... worthy choice could not be selected," said Savelli; "but I should scarce deem it possible that a Colonna could think there was an option between resistance and fealty to this upstart revolution." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... infantile sweetness which met his own. Pretty little thing! there was something marvellously taking in her appearance. For one moment, as she had spoken of inferior station, he had had an uneasy fear lest he had made the acquaintance of some vulgar upstart, with whom he could not possibly associate. But no! If ever the signs of race and breeding were distinguishable in personal appearance, they were so in the case of the girl before him. A glance at the head in its graceful setting, the delicate ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... driven "Before a sensual bigot's nod, "A wretch who shrines his lusts in heaven "And makes a pander of his God; "If her proud sons, her high-born souls, "Men in whose veins—oh last disgrace! "The blood of ZAL and RUSTAM[229] rolls.— "If they will court this upstart race "And turn from MITHRA'S ancient ray "To kneel at shrines of yesterday; "If they will crouch to IRAN'S foes, "Why, let them—till the land's despair "Cries out to Heaven, and bondage grows "Too vile for even ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... my heart. Hear then, and mark me well; for thou wilt see, I long have known the grief that weighs thee down. The Viceroy hates thee, fain would injure thee, For thou hast cross'd his wish to bend the Swiss In homage to this upstart house of princes, And kept them staunch, like their good sires of old, In true allegiance to the Empire. Say, Is't not so, Werner? ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... her ancient splendor and it was with a manifest touch of pride that the old verger who guided us through the cathedral dwelt on the long line of kings who had reigned at Winchester before the Norman conquest. To him, London at best was only an upstart ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... services during a whole decade was 600,000 rix-dollars! The bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, the province of Farther Pomerania and the isle of Rgen which her armies had actually conquered, and which had been guaranteed to her by a whole catena of treaties, went partly to the upstart electorate of Hanover and partly to the upstart kingdom of Prussia, both of which states had been of no political importance whatever at the beginning of the war of spoliation by which they were, ultimately, to profit so ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... what was the head and front of her offending, she begged the Countess to explain that she was a woman of peace, that war was abhorrent to her and all of her persuasion, and finally she quite won the Austrian's heart by telling him that she had no admiration for that upstart Bonaparte family (Miss Cassandra is nothing if not aristocratic); that for her part she liked old-established dynasties, like the Hapsburgs, and had always considered the marriage of the daughter of a long line of kings with the self-made Emperor a great come down for Maria Louisa. Please ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... at home that evening of Hans Kuhn's upstart pretensions, his statements were received with an ominous silence. Aunt Hedwig only coughed slightly, and continued her knitting with more than usual energy. Herr Sohnstein only moved a little in his chair and puffed a little harder than usual at his pipe. Minna, who was ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... human agents. The Chorus here has an importance altogether wanting in the Chorus of the Oedipus. They throw a pall of ancestral honour over the bier of the hereditary monarch, which would have been unbecoming in the case of the upstart king of Thebes. Till the arrival of Agamemnon, they occupy our attention, as the prophetic organ, not commissioned indeed but employed by heaven, to proclaim the impending horrors. Succeeding to the brief intimation of the watcher who opens the play, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... it on herself," said Dame Scratchard. "Why didn't she come to me before she set? She was always an upstart, self-conceited thing, but I'm sure ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... her teeth together as she regarded the letter with malice glittering in her heavy eyes. He was writing to her, then, the little upstart, ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... that I account abundant—that he considered it with the cold remorselessness of the monstrous egotist he was. An upstart, great-grandson to a carpenter, noble only in two descents, and in both of them stained by the block, he found a queen—the victim of a physical passion that took no account of the worthlessness underlying his splendid exterior—reaching out a hand to raise ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... settled as far as I am concerned," declared the turned-down player, firmly. "I play on the regular team or not at all. That's my proper place, and no miserable upstart like Alan Heathcote is going to crow ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... understood, although the practice had existed in the former reign. The gentry, whose family pride would vie with these nouveaux riches, exhausted themselves in rival profusion; all crowded to "upstart London," deserting their country mansions, which were now left to the care of "a poor alms-woman, or a ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... 1813 against Napoleon. It was an Idea that brought the Balkan League into being and carried its armies in triumph to Salonica and Adrianople. Freedom, Unity, Liberation, such were the forms which that Idea took: the determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke. In each ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... this great power to the west was necessarily the absorbing political question of the day. It menaced every potentate in France; and before a month was out a ring of foes had gathered round the upstart Angevin ruler. The outraged King of France; Stephen, King of England, and Henry's rival in the Norman duchy; Stephen's nephew, the Count of Champagne, brother of the Count of Blois; the Count of Perche; and Henry's own brother, Geoffrey, were at ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... commons, and people,—and all sought his downfall. He had no friends among the people, as Essex had in the time of Elizabeth. His extravagance, pomp, and insolence disgusted all orders; and his reign seemed to be an insult to the nation. Even the people regarded him as an upstart, setting himself above the old nobility, and enriching himself by royal domains, worth two hundred eighty-four thousand three hundred and ninety-five pounds. So the Commons violently attacked his administration, and impeached him. But he was shielded by the king, and even appointed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... said was that fate was a scurvy friend to you and seldom put you face to face with your foe on any clear issue. Perhaps I said too much; I'm hot-tempered, I know; never mind my taunt, John. But you'll allow it's galling to have a beggarly upstart like Turner throwing our bachelorhood in our teeth. Now if we had sons, or a son, one of us, I'll warrant we could bring him up with more credit than Turner brings up his long-lugged Sandy, or that randy lass ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... and musketoons, to give what was called the bridal shot, evinced the interest the people took in the occasion of the cavalcade, as they accompanied it upon their return to the castle. If there was here and there an elder peasant or his wife who sneered at the pomp of the upstart family, and remembered the days of the long-descended Ravenswoods, even they, attracted by the plentiful cheer which the castle that day afforded to rich and poor, held their way thither, and acknowledged, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... conduct and rapidly increasing sale of his Magazine would have been sufficient to make Constable hate with a perfect hatred. To see not only his old "Scots Magazine" eclipsed, but the authority of the Edinburgh Review itself bearded on its own soil by this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and wormwood; and, moreover, he himself had come in for his share in some of those grotesque jeux d'esprit by which, at this period, Blackwood's young Tory wags delighted to assail their elders and betters ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... queer ways of her brutish servile humor. Anna could not let old Katy serve at table—old Katy was too coarsely made from natural earth for that—and so Anna had all this to do herself and that she never liked, but even then this simple rough old creature was pleasanter to her than any of the upstart young. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein

... Jay knew that Bennie lived in a mud house, under the eaves of Farmer Green's barn. So he cried at once: "Then my search is ended! I'll come over to the barn this afternoon and fight the upstart." ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey

... bring?" growled Jodd. "Oh! I know what is in your mind, General, but if this upstart Nicephorus is wise, he'll leave you alone, since Lesbos does not want another governor, and will tell him so if there be need. Yes, it will take more than one ship of war, aye, and more than three, to set up another ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... calyculata, Mitra obeliscus, a Turritella, a Murex, Columbella versicolor, and a new species off Cape York, Ranella pulchella, new, several Nassae, Phos senticosa and blainvillei, and sculptilis, in 3 and 5 fathoms, off Cape York; Strombus campbelli, in mud off Cape Upstart; Cerithium obeliscus, and a new species of the genus Obeliscus. In the deeper localities Cypraea fimbriata occurred, dead, off Cape Capricorn; and two species of Ranella, one being R. pusilla, in 17 fathoms, off the Percy Isles. The univalves dredged ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... Victorine. "I know that she will not be invited. The marchioness hates her; Mrs. Gilmer is the only rival whom Madame de Fleury takes the trouble to detest; and it makes me indignant to see a lady of her superlative fascinations annoyed by this little upstart American. One must admit that Mrs. Gilmer is very pretty; her figure scarcely needs help, and she is so vivacious, and has so much aplomb, so much dash, that the notice she attracts renders her alarmingly ambitious. Still, for her to dare to contrast herself with ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Proudfoot didn't like to hear others gobble, nevertheless he enjoyed the excuse for a fight that their gobbling gave him. And when he had nothing more important to do he often stood still and listened in the hope of hearing some upstart gobbler testing his voice in a neighboring field. Newly grown cocks had to go a long way off to be safe ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... was of the highest statesmanship; and had it been followed, the history of the Stuart dynasty would have been different, and the Crown and the Parliament would have wrought together for the good and the honor of the nation, at least through a generation to come. But the upstart Buckingham was supreme. He had studied Bacon's strength and weakness, had laid him under great obligations, had at the same time attached him by the strongest tie of friendship to his person, and impressed upon his consciousness the fact that the fate of Bacon was at all times in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the promise of a schism. A second round robin was drafted to the Englishman, beginning: "Oh, Scoffer," and ending with a selection of curses from the rites of Mizraim and Memphis and the Commination of Jugana; who was a "fifth rounder," upon whose name an upstart "third rounder" once traded. A papal excommunication is a billet-doux compared to the Commination of Jugana. The Englishman had been proved under the hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains to have appropriated virtue and pretended ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... had it first, so what difference? Luis, at least, was spared. He died in 1830—and was the first Governor of Alta California after Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain. He had power in full measure and went before these upstart conquerors came to humble the rest of us into the dust. Peace to his ashes—but perhaps you care nothing for this dear brother of my youth, never heard of him before—such a giddy thing you were; although ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various



Words linked to "Upstart" :   nouveau-riche, wise guy, smart aleck, kip, social climber, disagreeable person, climber, parvenu, wiseacre, junior, wisenheimer, pretentious, arriviste



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