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Corduroy   /kˈɔrdərˌɔɪ/   Listen
Corduroy

verb
1.
Build (a road) from logs laid side by side.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Corduroy" Quotes from Famous Books



... head came in, and after it the body, and closed the door behind it; and a queer, cross-grained, tough-looking body it was, of about fifty years standing, or rather slouching, clothed in an old fustian coat, corduroy breeches and gaiters, and being the earthly tabernacle of Joe Muggles, the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... came out on a strange road they had to travel. The wilderness of pine forest had been left on the right after leaving Lone Pine, and the trail led down gradually to a bottomland of brilliant green herbage. Directly over this emerald valley ran a corduroy roadway. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... attended with a ceremony called stumping. This was a local way of publishing the banns, the names of the parties and the announcement of the event to take place being written on a slip of paper, and inserted on the numerous stumps bordering the corduroy road, that all who ran might read, though perchance none might scan it save some bewildered fox or wandering bear; the squire read the ceremony from the prayer-book, received his dollar, and further form for wedlock was required ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... the black ash swales. He cut logs twelve feet long and laid them side by side across the center of the road. Some of the logs, that he put into the road on the lowest ground, were more than a foot through; of course smaller poles answered where the ground was higher. We called this our corduroy road. In doing our road work and others doing theirs, year after year, in course of time we had the log way built across the wettest parts of the road. When it was still I could hear a cart or wagon, coming or going, rattling and pounding ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... around the band, a white shirt with a broad turndown collar and a flowing colored tie—blue; a cartridge belt that fitted snugly around his waist, yellow with newness, so that the man on the mesa almost imagined he could hear it creak when its owner moved; corduroy riding-breeches, tight at the knees, and glistening boots with stiff tops. And—here the observer's eyes gleamed with derision—as the buckboard passed, he had caught a glimpse of a nickeled spur, with long rowels, on one ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... away to the east. He is glad to see me. I am of his own kind, and there are so few of his kind about that his welcome is strong and warm. He is brown and spare and tough-looking. For six months he has driven along the pitching trails and corduroy roads, drenched by rains, scorched by suns, and pursued by the flies. As to the flies there is something to be said. They add much to the missionary's burden, and furnish unequaled opportunity for the exercise of the Christian graces ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor

... time the first questions and answers were over, Tressady, looking round for Madan, saw that the manager was speaking angrily to a tall man in a rough coat and corduroy trousers who had entered the pit premises in the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... feathers; parterres of exotic blooms such as no earthly garden ever held; hats with bows on 'em and hats with birds on 'em, and hats with beasts on 'em; hats that twitter and hats that squawk; hats of lordly velvet and hats of plebeian corduroy; felt hats, straw hats, chip hats; wide brim and narrow brim; skewered, beribboned, bebowed—finally, again, just hats, hats, hats, a phantasmagoria of primary colors and gewgaws and fallalerie pure and simple, before which the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... a rainy day in London. This is the American vaquero—usually a short, fat man with dumpy legs, who dons a flapping sombrero, buys a new Mexican saddle, wooden stirrups, and leather riata, sometimes adding a coil of rope at left side, wears the botas with a corduroy suit at dinner at hotel, and doesn't know at all how comical an appearance he presents. The very next to pass is one of the pioneers, who, although worth a million or more, puts on no style, and surveys the mongrel in front with a twinkle in his eye. Every ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... envoy at the top of Mountain Hill, which was then the only practicable highway between the Lower and the Upper Town. To-day the visitor landing at the quay reaches the terrace by the same route; but the present graceful declivity of Mountain Hill is little like the tortuous pathway of corduroy by which De Tracy and his glittering retinue made their toilsome way to the public square by the Jesuits' College. First came a company of guards in the royal livery, then four pages and six valets, and by the side of the King's ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... night smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It was not like the smell of the old peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday mass. That was a smell of air and rain and turf and corduroy. But they were very holy peasants. They breathed behind him on his neck and sighed as they prayed. They lived in Clane, a fellow said: there were little cottages there and he had seen a woman standing at the half-door of a cottage with a child in her arms as the cars had come ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... wagons through the mud reaches, it was necessary to stop every few minutes to give the horses a breathing spell. On the corduroy stretches it was often necessary to stop for half an hour or more at a time, while the drivers and Bob, wading knee deep, made such repairs as were possible ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... decided to make for her house. She asked her way to the nearest station, which was Notting Hill; here she took a ticket to Hammersmith and then walked to Kiva Street, where she knocked at the familiar door. A powerful-looking man in corduroy trousers and shirt sleeves ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... look a pet! He was (and still is to-day) in miner's dress, and it is corduroy trousers tucked into high-laced boots and a grey flannel shirt with a shallow turn down collar which has been turned up again, looking like a Lord Palmerton, or someone of that date; a loose tie and a corduroy Norfolk jacket, all a sort of earth colour except the tie, which is blue. The friend is ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... Dick wears corduroy breeches, a large hat, a cartridge belt, and is armed with a Winchester rifle. He is a crack shot and has taken charge of the deputies in the wrecked portion of the city. Yesterday afternoon he discovered two men and a woman cutting the finger from a dead woman to get her ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... the Peninsula in a white ambulance, which mules dragged through knee-deep mud and over flowing, corduroy roads. He had fever in his whole body, anguish in one leg, and hardly a wish to live. But at Fort Monroe the breezes came hurrying from the sea, like so many unfailing doctors, and blew his fever back inland where it belonged. He lay under a live-oak on the parade ground and ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... still wear his full beard and his old corduroy clothes, with a blue handkerchief knotted around his throat, to recall himself to you? Must I tell you that he ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... tent-flaps. From Fort Pitt westward the trail crossed a rough, wooded country, and there were no more scows to take the ox-carts across the rivers. Eleven days of continuous rain had flooded the sloughs into swamps; and in three days as many as eight corduroy bridges had to be built. Two {61} long trees were felled parallel and light poles were laid across the floating trees. Where the trees swerved to the current, some one would swim out and anchor them with ropes till the hundred carts had passed ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... however, a large black cigar protruded from his moustache when he stood on the wharf at Cherbourg, twenty-four hours later, and a small, ill-shaven stevedore, clad in a dark blouse and shabby corduroy trousers, pointed to the cloud of smoke that issued from Abe's lips and chattered a ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... hopefully humorous, now psychological, now new-womanly. Yesterday's pictures are the laughing-stock of the up-to- date artist of to-day, and to-day's art will be sneered at to-morrow. Now it is fashionable to be democratic, to pretend that no virtue or wisdom can exist outside corduroy, and to abuse the middle classes. One season we go slumming, and the next we are all socialists. We think we are thinking; we are simply dressing ourselves up in words we do not understand for the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... twitch, which brought it back to its old place again. He wore a man's coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... women whose names are known in every civilized nation on the globe, but none shines with the luster which surrounds Miss Anthony." She began by recalling her visit in 1871, when Mrs. Duniway and she made a speaking tour of six weeks in the State; the long stage rides over the corduroy roads, the prejudice encountered but personal friendliness and large audiences ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... (Grant) who has any luck. The list of discredited commanders good and bad increases. I am weary beyond measure of the kind of life I lead. I learn to-day, May 18th, of the progress of the investment of Vicksburg, and of John as busy at last with his proper work of bridges, corduroy roads and the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... third went through the fernery. We took that, and passed on through a second lovely bit of wood, where the ground was wet, and ferns of many kinds grew luxuriantly, and the walk was mostly over a dainty corduroy of minute moss-covered logs. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... always chose the well-traveled roads, and gave me plenty of room to turn. Once, I remember, they all wanted to take a short cut by way of an old corduroy road; and though, if master had been driving, I should have made no objection, and, as like as not, with a little jolting and pitching, we should have got safe over, I didn't feel like taking the responsibility, with all those young ones along, of going that way; so I tried to make our Ada understand ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... white turnback collar. A short skirt, made like the lower part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from knees to entrancing little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the hair done tight and low around her ears ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... A male gypsy in corduroy trousers and scarlet sash and calico shirt open on his brown throat came to the fire now, and the Wilbur twin admiringly noted that his father greeted this rare being, too, as an equal. The gypsy held beneath an arm a trim young gamecock feathered in rich browns and reds, with a hint of black, and ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... hair, but there was a dash of intelligence and likewise of wildness in the countenance of the elder female, whose complexion and hair were rather dark. The man was about the same age as the elder woman; he had rather a sharp look, and was dressed in hat, white frock-coat, corduroy breeches, long stockings and shoes. I gave them the seal ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... it is still occasionally worn. Now they generally wear linsey dresses in the winter, and cotton in the summer, at prices from 4-1/2d. to 6d. per yard. They wear boots nailed and tipped much like the men, but not so heavy, and in rough weather corduroy gaiters. Their cooking is rude and detestable to any one else's ideas; but it appears exactly suited to the coarse tastes and hearty appetite of their husbands. Being uneducated, and a large proportion unable to read, their chief intellectual amusement consists in ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... through rivers, lakes, swamps, muskegs and forest until they reached the prairie land of Manitoba. They were about three months on the way, arriving at Port Garry on the 24th of August. During this time it became necessary for the men to cut trails through brake and bramble, construct corduroy roads, build boats, ascend dangerous rapids, portage stores and supplies over almost insurmountable places, meanwhile fighting mosquitoes and black flies, and encountering countless dangers, all of which they ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... pine, birch, and mountain ash, with a few oaks and beech, did not appear so large as I expected, nor was our monotonous course enlivened by the sight of an occasional bear or eagle, being, we suppose, gone from home. Along some parts of the line we observed the corduroy road (trees laid close together), and gates formed of long poles counterpoised by a thicker part at ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches." ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... stretch of swamp that kept us on the corduroy road behind the jolting wagon I remember well; this was near Crawfordsville, Indiana. It is now gone, the corduroy and the timber as well. In their places great barns and comfortable houses dot the landscape as far as the eye ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... desk Gaston was sitting on the evening that Jude and Joyce were clinging to each other in the house under the maples. His hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers, his long legs extended, and his head thrown back; he was smoking one of his memory-filled pipes, and his eyes were fixed upon the rafters of ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... as a token of greeting sent some twelve-pound shells crashing among the trees about us. The firing now became brisk on our side, and the rebels replied spiritedly with their twelve-pounders. Hundreds of men were now called up from the rear brigades and detailed to build corduroy roads. Trees were cut down and trimmed of their branches, and laid side by side so as to form a kind of bridge over the swamp to enable more artillery to come up. The rapidity with which such roads were built ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... hobnailed boot appeared, his corduroy leg followed, and next moment he stood in the room with a menacing look and attitude and a short thick bludgeon in his knuckly hand. Bill quickly stood beside him. After another cautious look round, the two advanced with extreme care—each step so carefully taken that the ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... the costume of the trainer, I recommend a close cap, a stout pair of boots, short trousers or breeches of stout tweed or corduroy, a short jacket with pockets outside, one to hold the straps and gloves, the other a few pieces of carrot to reward the pupil. A pocket-handkerchief should be handy to wipe your perspiring brow. A ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... shirt was wrinkled and stained by weather and wear, the roomy corduroy trousers were worn from saddle chafing, the big spurs were rusted of rowel and shank. But the boots were new—he had bought them before leaving the range, to wear in college, laying them aside with regret when he found them not just the thing in vogue—and ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... day I went with Captain Maynadier across the point to reconnoitre the batteries on the island and watch the explosions of the shells. We passed a deserted farm-house, and saw a squad of Colonel Buford's soldiers running down pigs and chickens. Crossing a creek upon a corduroy bridge, we came to a second squad. One was playing a violin, and several were dancing; they were as happy as larks. We stood upon the bank of the river opposite the island. Before us was the floating battery, which was formerly the New Orleans dry-dock. It mounted eight ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... taken up with the account of her doings in Paris. She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the top ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... stairs turned the eyes of every one toward the wide doorway. A ripple of fond surprise circled the room, as Grace descended the last step to be met by Tom Gray. Into the room, hand in hand, stepped two veritable foresters. In his suit of brown corduroy, with his high-laced tan boots, Tom looked as though he were about to start on one of the long hikes in which he so delighted. Attired in a trim suit of hunter's green that reached a trifle below ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... to his side. He stepped forward, stooped, and peered into the tent. "Thought so," he said laughing queerly. Save for a pair of old quilts and an old corduroy ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... she had said, realizing distinctly that fustian and corduroy would not do. She was even a little doubtful of the best clothes. The gardener's little boy, once his mouth had shut and his legs come back to their locomotion, brought them at once. If there was a suspicion of alacrity in his obedience towards the last, it escaped the ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... care in skidding and hauling the logs to the yard or mill. Care should be exercised in the logging operations not to tear or damage the bark of trunks of standing timber. If possible, only the trees of unimportant timber species should be cut for making corduroy roads in the forests. This will be a saving ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... a road. It was a trail, and in places barely that. But, sixteen years before, a road had been cleared through the forest by some people who believed there was oil near the Canadian line. They cut down trees and built corduroy bridges. But in sixteen years it has not been used. No wheels have worn it smooth. It takes its leisurely way, now through wilderness, now through burnt country where the trees stand stark and dead, now through prairie or creek-bottom, now up, now ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... One had a napkin tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his coat- tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight buttoned ye would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were tied round his ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe, which I saw a man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the beast's head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... ground is mostly gravel and well packed, the above method of planking is unnecessary. The bank should have a few stringers and braces to support it. When only a few planks are used the term "corduroy the bank" is used ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... dark drab colour and the surface of the newly painted doors bore a strong resemblance to corduroy cloth, and from the bottom corners of nearly every panel there was trickling down a large tear, as if the doors were weeping for the degenerate condition of the decorative arts. But these tears caused to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... three of the convalescents. One was a sturdy, farmhand sort of fellow, with yellow hair and a yellow mustache—the kind of man who might have been a Norman; he wore khaki puttees, brown corduroy trousers, and a jacket which fitted his heavy, vigorous figure rather snugly. Another was a little soul dressed in the "blue horizon" from head to foot, a homely little soul with an egg-shaped head, brown-green eyes, a retreating chin, and irregular teeth. The last, wearing the old tenue, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... kind of cotton stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc. 2. Re-solved', made clear, disentangled. 4. De-form'i-ties, misshapen persons. Stunt'ed, checked in growth. Mea'ger, thin, lean. 5. Gro-tesque' (pro. gro-tesk'), fanciful, absurd. Ad-min'is-tered, gave, dispensed. In-stall'ment (literally, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... you. They lead you often into familiarity with human nature in undress, rejoicing in the liberty of old clothes, or of none at all. People do not mince along the banks of streams in patent-leather shoes or crepitating silks. Corduroy and home-spun and flannel are the stuffs that suit this region; and the frequenters of these paths go their natural gaits, in calf-skin or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The girdle of conventionality is laid aside, and the skirts rise with ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... a person, in passing from the Long-Wharf to Dock-Square, was assaulted and knocked down, by a single villain, who robbed him of a box, containing a coat, two waistcoats, a pair of corduroy breeches, a piece of calico, in which was wrapped up three watches, and a ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... Filley, who moved here from Connecticut and settled about two and a half miles from the town of Jackson, then a small village with plenty of stumps and mudholes in its streets. Many of the roads leading thereto had been paved with tamarac poles, making what is now known as corduroy roads. The country was still new and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... raised a hue and cry for miles around, and our hunted friends, from their covert, saw mounted men patrolling the corduroy road through the swamp, seemingly under the belief that the "Yankees" would be driven to use this highway eventually, and thus fall an easy prey into their hands. The man-hunters, however, found themselves at fault, for our hero ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... mulberry coat and brass buttons, Miss Joanna Godden's coachman, though as the vapours of the marsh had shaped him into a shepherd's crook, his uniform lost some of its effect. Downwards from the bottom of his coat he was just a farm-labourer, with feet of clay and corduroy trousers tied with string. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... European Sweet Waters you may go by carriage, but if wise will go there also by caique; for even the corduroy roads of our Southern country, so famous for their dislocating qualities, can be paralleled by the so-called road over which once (and once only), for our sins, we suffered ourselves to be shaken, not driven. It is the fashion at Constantinople ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... tongue farther out than ever, they turned their backs on Dawson, crossed the lower corner of Lot 6, behind the Government Reserve, stared with fresh surprise at the young market-garden flourishing there, down to the many-islanded Klondyke, across in the scow-ferry, over the Corduroy, that cheers and deceives the new-comer for that first mile of the Bonanza Trail, on through pool and morass to the thicket of white birches, where the Colonel thought ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... about his fire, which is burning badly, mainly because he is giving most of his attention to a bound volume of music which he has open. He is a young man of twenty-two, with wavy auburn hair; wears old corduroy trousers and a grey flannel shirt, open at the throat. He stirs the fire, then takes violin and plays the ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... black van. And Daniel—to his cousin a sort of Christ between thieves—was hurried past the privileged loafers in the corridor, and down the broad steps. A murmuring wave agitated the crowd. Unkempt idlers and ne'er-do- wells in corduroy leaped up like tigers in the air, and the policemen fought them back furiously. And Daniel and his guardians shot through the little living lane. Quick! Quick! For the captive is more sacred even than a messiah. The law has him in charge! And like a feat of prestidigitation Daniel disappeared into ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... corduroy trousers, his coarse white shirt—the buttons of which were unfastened at the throat—and the collar loosely turned back, showing a bronzed chest, he looked like an operatic hero, the while he sat before his instrument and sang some of those wondrous ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... lines the walls of a house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back, his little lovelit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... rind is pared off by a lance-head used with two hands, like a cooper's drawing-knife. The bark is then laid upon a beam of wood on the ground, on which it is hammered with a mallet grooved in fine cuts, so that the repeated blows stamp the bark with lines somewhat resembling corduroy. This hammering expands the bark, which is repeatedly turned and hammered again, until at length it is beaten into a cloth of rather fine texture. The action of the air colours the material, which, although white ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... the wood, and really almost glad, though I expect you will hardly believe it. Our quota of work in the winter no doubt did a good deal towards the transformation, and spring is now helping matters. The corduroy no longer stops at the worst parts, where we used to hold our breaths and make a dive for it. Hunter Avenue, and right beyond it to the end of the wood, is now quite a pleasant walk. Rations and carrying parties, though they ...
— Short History of the London Rifle Brigade • Unknown

... for offering it may be found in the exigencies of squatter-life. We are a notable people for our attachment to the frying-pan, and there is no doubt that it is a shifty utensil: it can be slung at the saddle-bow or carried in a valise, it will bear the jolting of a corduroy road, and furnish a camp-mess in the minimum of time out of material that was perhaps but a moment before sniffing or pecking at its rim. A very little blaze sets the piece of cold fat swimming, and the black cavity soon glows and splutters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... had sunk below the level, and the approaches had to be corduroyed to a practicable grade. Others again were humped up like tom-cats, and had to be pulled apart entirely. In spots the "corduroy" had spread, so that the horses thrust their hoofs far down into leg-breaking holes. The experienced animals were never caught, however. As soon as they felt the ground giving way beneath one foot, they threw ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... a blue cotton shirt and a pair of scanty corduroy knickerbockers, but he wore it with such an unconscious air of purple and fine linen that Miss Trevor was tricked into believing him much better dressed than he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... utterly sober, carrying himself with the assurance of the master in his own house, he would not have suffered by comparison with any man. Instead of the black broadcloth that Alice had expected, he wore a loose brown shooting jacket, drab corduroy breeches, a drab cloth waistcoat and brown leather leggings, and he wore them with a distinction that Rowcliffe might have envied. His face, his whole body, alert and upright, had the charm of some shy, half-savage animal. When he stood at ease his ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... prisoners of which in early days were sometimes let out for a half-holiday, with the warning from the gaoler, Johnnie Barr, that if they did not come back by eight o'clock they would be locked out for the night.[1] The usual dress of the settlers was a blue shirt, moleskin or corduroy trousers, and a slouch hat. Their leader, Captain Cargill, wore always a blue "bonnet" with a crimson knob thereon. They named their harbour Port Chalmers, and a stream, hard by their city, the Water of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... floor of the city | |hall. Arranged for display are a hundred or more | |cameras of all sizes, thermos bottles, purses, hand | |bags, and even a snare drum. | | | |Around the room are racks on which are hanging | |cloaks and coats, here a red sweater, there a white | |corduroy cloak. Under them are heaps of hats, mostly| |men's straw, obviously of this year's make. There | |are several hundred women's headgear, decorated with| |feathers and ribbons. | | | |Along one side are piled suit cases and ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... room, a man in a broad-skirted green coat, with corduroy knee-smalls and gray cotton stockings, was performing the most popular steps of a hornpipe, with a slang and burlesque caricature of grace and lightness, which, combined with the very appropriate character ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... to stretch like the channellings in a piece of new corduroy, lending a meanly utilitarian air to the expanse, taking away its gradations, and depriving it of all history beyond that of the few recent months, though to every clod and stone there really attached associations enough ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... momentarily revealed by the corner light as he darted across to take position by the door, this animal with sickly face and pointed chin, with dirty muffler round its chicken-neck, shoddy coat clothing its sloping shoulders, baggy corduroy trousers flapping round its bony shanks—this was Popinot's, and but one of a thousand differing in no essential save ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that seemed expressed in so many trifles at such moments,—as in his manner of dropping his hands loosely into the pockets of his corduroy coat, and standing immovable. Without taking his eyes from the fire he sat down presently on a log and she saw him fumbling for his pipe and tobacco. He bent to thrust a chip into the fire with the deliberation that ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in 1817. On land, road making made slower progress. The blazed trail gave way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage. Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States to the south. But at best neither roads nor vehicles were fitted for carrying ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... around, as years have a way of doing, and found Calmar Bye, the city man, metamorphosed indeed. Bronzed, bearded, corduroy-clothed, cigarette-smoking,—for cigars fifty miles from a railroad are a curiosity,—as the seasons are dissimilar, so was he unlike his former inconsequent self. In his every action now was a directness ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Lord High Executioner,' or words to that effect. I told him I didn't see why he should interfere with so picturesque a custom, and he said if I visited one of his castles that these estimable people, at a word from him, would form a corduroy road in the mud with their bodies, so that I might step dry-shod from the carriage to the castle doors, and I stipulated that he should at least spread a bit of stair carpet over the poor wretches before I made my progress across his ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... stood in the doorway of his room, in his carpet slippers and faded corduroy jacket that ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... screamed as a man darted out to the spade, which he was about to carry in out of the wet, when he perceived the company under the veranda, and stood still in amazement. He was a young laborer with a reddish-brown beard of a week's growth. He wore corduroy trousers and a linen-sleeved corduroy vest; both, like the hasp and spade, new. A coarse blue shirt, with a vulgar red-and-orange neckerchief, also new, completed his dress; and, to shield himself ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... every year. Here were all the coats which this monarch had had for fifty years before, three hundred whips, canes without number, every sort of uniform, the costumes of all the order of Europe, splendid fur pelisses, hunting coats and breeches; among other etcetera, a dozen pair of corduroy breeches made to hunt in when Don Miguel was in London. His profusion in these articles was explained by the fact that he never paid for them; but his memory in relation to them was nevertheless so ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... thumbed the bank-notes. The dark brown corduroy was simply, if mannishly cut, and in a way it became her. Her small feet and rounded ankles would have appeared to better advantage in high-heeled shoes and silk stockings than those blunt-nosed boots and canvas ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... he walked in just as he was; leather coat, aviator's cap with the ear-tabs flapping, corduroy breeches tucked into riding boots that needed a shine and the heels straightened? Would they put him out, or would they think he was so rich and famous he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... nothing had been forgotten, for they did not give many feasts, and this was one of gratitude. Peter was late, because he had gathered his whole establishment to dress him, including the old groom, who wished him to go in corduroy breeches and top boots, and Speug was polished to the extent of shining. He was also so modest that he would not speak, nor even look, and when Nestie began to discourse on his goodness he cast glances at the door and perspired visibly, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... further search revealed a cushion which just fitted the window-seat, not surprising in view of the fact that the window-seats throughout the dormitories were fairly uniform in size. The cushion cost them two dollars. It was covered with faded green corduroy and in places was pretty well flattened out by much service. But it answered their purpose and really looked quite fine when in place. Tom cast doubts on the positive assertion of the seller that it was filled with genuine ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the man, and put the sovereign into the pocket of his trousers, which were of a corduroy material. "Now," said he, "what am I to do to ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he turned abruptly and looked back. His forehead was furrowed like a corduroy road and the one rampant question in his mind at the moment seemed to be mired hopelessly ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... moroseness by twinkling black eyes marked him as a man with a personality. He was short and thick set, with shaggy, iron-gray eyebrows, a smooth-shaven face speckled on one side as by a powder scar. Beneath a thin-lipped mouth a stubborn chin protruded. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, fastened by a black belt. He had the self-sufficient air of the sailor or miner, which is developed by living a great deal apart from other men. It seemed to Wilson that the man was watching him, too, with considerable interest. Every now and then he ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... she took the hills with an elastic ease that showed her deep-bosomed in spite of her slenderness. The short corduroy riding skirt and high-laced boots were made for use, not grace, but the man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log, was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... figure with a tawny face and a long brown beard. The face was half hidden under a slouched felt hat, the figure was clad in clumsy corduroy. Ida was just near enough to see that the outline of the face was good, when the man rose and went into his hut, shutting ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... a corduroy road hastily laid down by a grre (engineer) regiment in war-wasted land. The piece of wall on the right is all that remains of a French village of five ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge

... ten cents each, and a watch worth five dollars valued at twenty dollars, so he left the place in disgust and hurried home, through the woods, in no placid frame of mind. Of four new shoes put on his horse that morning, three had been torn off by the mud, roots, and corduroy between Cleveland and Middleburg. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... a reserve like that of Round Valley would not to-day, after thirteen years of occupation, be a mass of weeds and litter, with bad roads, poor fences, and an almost impassable corduroy bridge over a little ditch. On the contrary, in half the time it would be a model of cleanliness and order; it would have the best roads, the neatest cottages, the cleanest grounds, the most thorough culture; and when the Indians had produced this effect, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... to New Madrid was, for the most part, a dilapidated corduroy, tumbling about a broken causeway through a swamp. M. Jeff. Thompson, "Brigadier-General of the Missouri State Guard," designed to hold a "very important session of the Missouri Legislature," at New Madrid, ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... Mars. Hercules Robinson has drawn a pen picture of the unfortunate French admiral as he came on board the British ship: "Villeneuve was a tallish, thin man, a very tranquil, placid, English-looking Frenchman; he wore a long-tailed uniform coat, high and flat collar, corduroy pantaloons of a greenish colour with stripes two inches wide, half-boots with sharp toes, and a watch-chain with long gold links. Majendie was a short, fat, jocund sailor, who found a cure for all ills in the Frenchman's philosophy, "Fortune de la guerre" (though this was the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... knit muscles and exactly matched the brown of the abundant wavy hair in which the morning sun was setting glints of gold as he knelt before the fire and deftly completed his cookery. His soft wide-brimmed felt hat pushed far back on the head, the corduroy trousers, leather chaps and belt with brace of pistols all fitted into the picture and made the girl feel that she had suddenly left the earth where she had heretofore lived and been dropped into an unknown land with a strong kind ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... to have seen Thompson go by. But the solution was simple. There was one Monday and Tuesday I had my road gang off in the bush, on the opposite side from the Skunk's Misery valley, getting stuff to finish a bit of corduroy. In those two days I could have missed seeing ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... meat in famine when a hit or a miss meant life or death. Truly, though this girl did not yet mean quite that, nevertheless she meant much to him—more, now, than ever, as he rode beside her, glancing at her as often as he dared, she in her corduroy riding-habit, so bravely manlike, yet so essentially and revealingly woman, smiling, laughing, talking, her eyes sparkling, the flush of a day of sun and summer breeze warm ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of iron-gray ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... decided to set out straightway and have the coronation done; though it was midwinter; and Konigsberg (for Prussia is to be our title, "King in Prussia," and Konigsberg is Capital City there) lies 450 miles off, through tangled shaggy forests, boggy wildernesses, and in many parts only corduroy roads. We order "30,000 post-horses," besides all our own large stud, to be got ready at the various stations: our boy Friedrich Wilhelm, rugged boy of twelve, rough and brisk, yet much "given to blush" withal (which is a feature of him), shall go with us; much more, Sophie Charlotte ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... about the weather,—the first instance I have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking to an unintroduced gentleman. Besides these, a middle-aged man of the lower class, and also a gentleman's out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the knee to the ankle. He complained to the other man of the cold weather; said that a glass of whiskey, every half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, accidentally hitting ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... toes and a Buffer, Still I've sunshine in my heart; Still I'm fond of tops and marbles Can appreciate a tart. I can love my Neighbor Nelly, Just as though I were a boy, And would hand her cakes and apples, From my depths of corduroy. ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow



Words linked to "Corduroy" :   make, cloth, construct, fabric, build, route, material, Bedford cord, textile, narrow wale, wide wale, road



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