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Unenviable   /ənˈɛnvˌiəbəl/   Listen
Unenviable

adjective
1.
Hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment.  Synonyms: awkward, embarrassing, sticky.  "An awkward pause followed his remark" , "A sticky question" , "In the unenviable position of resorting to an act he had planned to save for the climax of the campaign"
2.
So undesirable as to be incapable of arousing envy.






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"Unenviable" Quotes from Famous Books



... to be regretted that Connecticut earned such an unenviable place in history as this. It seems strange, indeed, that such an occurrence could take place in the nineteenth century in a free State in a republic in North America! But such is ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... was Camilo Polavieja, who as Governor of the Philippines has made for himself an unenviable reputation ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... o'clock, when silence had reigned for a quarter of an hour, there entered with much bustle the last occupant of the bedroom. She was a young woman with a morally unenviable reputation, though some of her colleagues certainly envied her. Money came to her with remarkable readiness whenever she had need of it. As usual, she began to talk very loud, at first with innocent vulgarity; exciting a little laughter, she ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... first was my terror of the hobble-dehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other, if less momentous, was more mortifying. In early days—at my mother's knee, as a man may say—I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have never since been able to lose) of singing "Just before the Battle." I have what the French call a fillet of voice—my best notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... naming. They could have submitted to close stowage had the dunnage been decent. But instead of swinging in cosy hammocks, they slept in bunks or wretched pigeon-holes, on fragments of sails, unclean rags, blanket-shreds, and the like. Such unenviable accommodations ought hardly to have been disputed with their luckless possessors, who nevertheless were not allowed to occupy in peace their broken-down bunks and scanty bedding. Two races of creatures, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... the Spirit in a very unenviable position, that of preaching four or five different teachings at the same time, each within a half-mile of the other. Suppose a preacher were to do that! What would the people think of him? It would ruin the reputation of any preacher in Christendom. ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney

... outside to try to escort them to some place of safety; therefore, there was little chance that the missionaries would try to make a bolt. Instead of being in the position of a cat that watches silently and springs when the mouse breaks cover, he was in the unenviable condition now of being forced to make the first move. Over and over again he cursed the men who had made Ali Partab prisoner, and over and over again: he wondered how—by all the gods of all the multitudinous ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... service, and directed that the crown lawyers should defend the soldiers under prosecution. This had the effect of exasperating the populace still more. They saw that the soldiers would be acquitted—which was actually the case, and rewarded likewise—and the exploit was named by the unenviable denomination of "The Massacre of St. George's-fields." Exciting papers were stuck up in every part of the metropolis, and even on the very walls of St. James's-palace. The mansion-house was assailed so frequently that a constant ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of the pope and the Jesuits in their efforts to check Protestantism in the latter half of the sixteenth century was the son of Charles V, Philip II. Like the Jesuits he enjoys a most unenviable reputation among Protestants. Certain it is that they had no more terrible enemy among the rulers of the day than he. He closely watched the course of affairs in France and Germany with the hope of promoting the cause ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... arrival at York, had taken up his quarters at a public house. The York inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... Congress declared it was incompatible with their honor to hold any manner of correspondence or intercourse with him. His title of Governor arose from his being at one time governor of Pensacola. He had a most unenviable reputation in the English navy. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... consequence it was only by paying the keenest attention that he could detect those who from sheer incapacity were relaxing their strain on the traces. And his position was not pleasant even when he knew, for to tell any of these brave people that they must turn back was a most unenviable [Page 165] task. Thus it came about that all six of them marched on, though Scott was sure that better progress would have been made had ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... of the numerous cases found in old writings in general, and above all in the history of Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Wuertemberg are confounded. Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a prophet hath no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... vain-glory of conquest linked with defeated ambition, and the sullied splendour of royalty just breaking through the clouds of discontent, and slowly dispelling the mists of disaffection and political prejudice. What an unenviable contrast to the man who has "no enemy but wind and rough weather." The same objects that prompted these discordant reflections gave rise to others of the most opposite character; and within the walls, where treaties, abdications, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... servants of the crown at this time were men whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with his own hand: he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of every Roman poet from Vergil to Ausonius. Yet in spite of its apparent prosperity, the seeds of coming decline had already been sown. Strabo tells us that even in early Imperial days the city was obtaining an unenviable reputation for malaria: a circumstance that was due to the over-flowing of the unwholesome streamlet, the Salso, whose reeking and fever-bearing waters began to impregnate the earth. Engineering works on a large scale were planned ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... for instance, the possession of a sixth toe or finger, would in the eyes of the multitude go far toward making a man morally objectionable. It was, perhaps, because I wished to save my friend Storm from this unenviable lot that I always contended that he was yet a promising ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... their multitude, it would be found that they are indeed 'evil.' We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who are marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest moralities of life—by the exercise of the kindliest affections, and the interchange of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... unenviable task, but I did it. Poor Uncle Bob! I shall never forget his face when he saw the mutilated body of the dog that for years had been his faithful companion. He almost wept, only rage and resentment against the murderer were so strong in ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... the world the United States stands to-day in an unenviable light. It is a false light. Since the days of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin our people have led in much of the march upward from the slough of weltering strife. Many a stumbling block to progress we have removed from the rugged pathway, but ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... with the German officers in their embarrassment. Here was the son of the old King whom they had raised, and whom they had deserted. What an unenviable office was theirs when they must make war upon, suppress, and make a feint of punishing, this man to whom they stood bound by a hereditary alliance, and to whose father they had already failed so egregiously! They were loyal all round. They were loyal to their Tamasese, and got him off ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... one of unenviable distinction and power. He could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he could not consider the killing ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to the arms of Eugene ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Guadarrama, the Cantabrian, and the Pyrenees), and are usually of the male species. Generally speaking the property of lycanthropy in Spain appears to be hereditary; and, as one would naturally expect in a country so pronouncedly Roman Catholic, to rid the lycanthropist of his unenviable property it is the custom to resort to exorcism. Though they are extremely rare, both flowers and streams possessing the power of transmitting the property of werwolfery are to be found in the Cantabrian mountains ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... and looking down, wondering how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar of Stylites in the midst of an ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... mood? Canst thou shine now, then darkle, And being latent, feel thyself no less? As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure, Yet envies none, none are unenviable.' ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the Roman commonwealth has presented all the different political functions and organizations more purely and normally than any other in ancient or modern times, it has also exhibited political disorganization-anarchy— with an unenviable clearness. It is a strange coincidence that in the same years, in which Caesar was creating beyond the Alps a workto last for ever, there was enacted in Rome one of the most extravagant political farces that was ever produced upon the stage of the world's history. The new regent ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... difficulties which beset the new Prime Minister brings home a sense of his unenviable position. Ireland was on the verge of starvation and revolt; everywhere in Europe the rebellions which culminated in 1848 were beginning to stir, seeming then more formidable than they really were in their immediate consequences; in England the Chartist movement was thought to threaten ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... say what were our motives in going there. From what I have related of the circumstances which conspired to induce us to go, and the manner of our going, you can but see that no absurd desire for notoriety, no coveting of such unenviable fame as we know must await us, were the inducements. And as a simple fact, there was nothing so very important in a feeble woman's going as a delegate to that Convention; but the fact was made an unpleasant one in the experience of that delegate, and was blown into notoriety by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Mobile, where he intended establishing a mercantile house in connection with a gentleman named Waldron, a native of Portsmouth, who had resided several years in Charleston. I had one brief interview with him, but no opportunity offered of entering into the details of my unenviable position on board the John. On a hint from me that I was dissatisfied, and should not object to accompany him in the Edwin, he gravely shook his head, and remarked that such a course would be unusual and improper; that he was about to retire from the sea; that it would be best for ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... mother. Brought up in a comfortless, poverty-stricken home, without any religious teaching or influences, what wonder that they became addicted to most of the petty vices,—that they acquired an unenviable reputation for mischief, mendacity, and thieving in a ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... house is simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style, and the guests, and sometimes the proprietors, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... who had, through the necessity of defending, for fifteen years, an unenviable position between Isobel and Gyp, developed an unusual amount of assertiveness, was what his uncle fondly called "quite a boy." But the dignity of his first long trousers, at one glance, fell before the boyish mischievousness of his ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... Gifford; I won't call it, as it seems at first sight, wildly improbable, but it is at any rate an almost incredible coincidence. With your knowledge of the law I need scarcely remind you that the facts as you have just recounted them place you in a rather unenviable position." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... say it is always midnight. And I just want to say, Jane, that the big country girl, Shirley Duncan, is the only one not terrified. But I suppose country girls are accustomed to wild things." Everyone seemed loath to add further criticism to Shirley's rather unenviable reputation. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... town on the Euxine, near the mouth of the Danube, where he died, A.D. 18. Niebuhr places him after Catullus the most poetical among the Roman poets, and ranks him first for facility. He did not direct his genius by a sound judgment, and has the unenviable fame of having been the first to depart from the canons of correct Greek taste.] the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... of a tyrant to a much greater extent than the man who, he says, drove him to the act of mutiny. After giving an account of the manner of his death, Captain Beechey says, 'Thus fell a man who, from being the reputed ringleader of the mutiny, has obtained an unenviable celebrity, and whose crime may perhaps be considered as in some degree palliated by the tyranny which led to its commission.' It is to be hoped, such an act as he was guilty of will never be ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... find ample opportunities for carrying on their nefarious practices. Their common haunts are the "sly grog-shops" which spring up like weeds on all sides. Here they rendezvous, and concoct those deeds of darkness which have given the colony such an unenviable fame. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785) had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The foundation of the colony ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... Arc, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Byron, Swinburne, and Dostoieffsky are but a few among many great names in the world of art, religion and statecraft. Epileptic princes, kings and kinglets who have achieved unenviable notoriety might be named by scores, Wilhelm II being the most notable of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... policy, either on logical or on moral grounds. Without attempting to prove that the teaching of the Church is wrong, birth controllers began the attack by a complete misrepresentation of what that teaching actually is. This unenviable task was undertaken by Lord Dawson of Penn, at the ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... some kind of effort to elevate the Negro than to grieve about what was already done. So the idea of a manual training-school was advanced by two gentlemen, one of whom is a stanch Southerner, who for a long time had the unenviable reputation of believing and openly advocating the strange and illogical theory that the Negro has no soul; the other is a minister of Southern birth, but of Northern education. Infatuated with the prospects of ultimate success, and having, it seems providentially, ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various

... numerous investigations, thereby giving immense satisfaction to those obscure agitators who were lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and to the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... Pavlovna had drawn her first quarter's allowance. After that, scandalous reports about her began to arrive; then they became more and more frequent; at last a tragicomic story, in which she played a very unenviable part, ran the round of all the journals, and created a great sensation. Affairs had come to a climax. Varvara ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look of one,—a combination of form, voice, and features which would have made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... presents a succession of bald-pated surfaces, extremely slippery, and incapable of being permanently grooved. A specimen of this will be often referred to in the course of this account, being that which has attained such an unenviable degree of notoriety in the Poultry. Other inventors have shown ingenuity and perseverance; but the great representative of wooden paving we take to be the Metropolitan Company, and we proceed to a narrative of the attacks it has sustained, and the struggles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... right. Honor was certainly in a most unenviable frame of mind. She considered that Vivian had treated her unfairly in assuming her to be guilty without making any ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... revenge of Antony, it was a cobbler who conducted the sicarii to Formiae, whither Cicero had fled in a litter, intending to put to sea. His bearers would have fought, but Cicero forbade them, and one Herennius has the unenviable notoriety ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... in Paris. On one occasion, at a cafe, he had cut a bullying hussar's head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old—it was Paul and Henry—and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ever been, he yet always listened patiently to what I said, and I could, in ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... seemed intolerably close to Mrs. Fetherel, and she drew out her scent-bottle, and then thrust it hurriedly away, conscious that she was still the center of an unenviable attention. And all the while ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... this humid cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to an inordinate length—from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to a few inches of land amid a desolation of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... lunched with the Governor General, Mr. Gohr, the Director of Justice—who at present is in the unenviable position of having many critics in Europe, usually imperfectly informed of the details and evidence laid before the judges—Mr. Vandamme, who knows everyone and everything connected with the State, Commandant and Madame Sillye, Judge and Madame Webber, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... a home to-day where, at one time or another, the housewife has not gone through the unenviable experience of being financially able and perfectly willing to pay for the services of some one to help her in her housekeeping duties, and yet found it almost impossible to get a really competent and intelligent employee. As a rule, those who apply for positions ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... the two frigates we saw off there when we passed northward. However, we saw nothing but a brig inside the harbour, sailing close along the land. Late on the evening of the 28th, when rounding Cape St. Angelo, a squall from the high land carried away our fore and second masts, and left us in a very unenviable situation, considering we had but a few hours' coals on board. However, a breeze favouring us all night, we arrived here at ten A.M., 29th May. Upon the foremast we lost one ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... in Committee of the Whole, having been concurred in, etc., the Joint Resolution, as originally reported by the Judiciary Committee, was at last passed, (April 8th)—by a vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays—Messrs. Hendricks and McDougall having the unenviable distinction of being the only two Senators, (mis-)representing Free States, who voted against this definitive Charter of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... in many cases they were sorely in need of clothes. The way in which Sir Frederick Haldimand came to their relief is deserving of high praise. If he had adhered to the letter of his instructions from England, the position of the Loyalists would have been a most unenviable one. Repeatedly, however, Haldimand took on his own shoulders the responsibility of ignoring or disobeying the instructions from England, and trusted to chance that his protests would prevent the government from repudiating his actions. When the home government, for instance, ordered ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... were left solely to their mythology, their views of a future state were melancholy and confused. Death was an evil, not a release. Even in their Elysium, their favourite heroes seem to enjoy but a frigid and unenviable immortality. Yet this saddening prospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulate to glory:—"Make the most of existence," say their early poets, "for soon comes the dreary Hades!" And placed beneath a delightful ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... natural course of things we succeeded to this unenviable position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it pretty well, and there was hope that we could at least contrive to worry along. And we certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors in office. We had nothing to boast ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen the boy's remorse) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary MacGrawler conspired with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish in producing that unenviable state of vacuity which now saddened over the pockets ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was brought by our Officers from a neighbourhood which has, by reason of the atrocities perpetrated in it, obtained an unenviable renown, even among similar districts of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... appearance, is to plunge into the nearest river, by which they think to purify themselves. This course, however, in reality, tends to shorten their existence. When the small pox rages among the Aborigines, a most unenviable position is held by their "Medicine Man." He is obliged to give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" among the Indians are so mixed up with witchcraft ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... ambition for the applause awarded to adventure made a gamester of him, and at Paris he began, from the same motive, that worship of the conventional Venus, the serious inculcation of which has earned for him the largest and most unenviable part of his reputation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... side to side she is liable to dip the end of her heavy boom in the water and "trip herself up." When a boat trips up she does not necessarily go down, but she is likely to upset, placing the young sailors in an unenviable, if not dangerous, position. Fourth, when the craft begins to swagger before the wind she is liable to "goose neck," that is throw her boom up against the mast, which is another accident fraught with the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... Maurier's foolish little book—as a disagreeable duty. The lot of the critic is an unenviable one. He must read everything, even such insufferable rot as "Coin's Financial School," and those literary nightmares turned loose in rejoinder—veritable Rozinantes, each bearing a chop-logic Don Quixote ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the snow,—traveling not unfrequently in pairs,—a lean, hungry couple, bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,—feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in spring. In April I have found the young of the previous year creeping around the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail and carrying ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... he was a "stickit minister," that is, one who had failed in the attempt to preach; and when the presbytery dismissed him on the charge of heresy, there had been many tears on the part of his pupils, and much childish defiance of his unenviable successor. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... town in England seems to have enjoyed so unenviable a reputation for some centuries for the folly and stupidity of its inhabitants, that I am induced to send you the following Query (with the reasons on which it is founded) in the hope that some of your readers may be able to help one ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... Salem; but the death-penalty has never been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Field hospital alone I gained the impression that the musculo-spiral nerve would not retain the unenviable character of being the most vulnerable nerve of the upper extremity, since the chances of each individual nerve seemed about equal, putting the question of the long course of the musculo-spiral nerve against the humerus out of question. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... in the reign of Anne (who granted a charter in 1710), and a little later Bristol was the centre of the Methodist revival of Whitefield and Wesley. The city was small, densely populated and dirty, with dark, narrow streets, and the mob gained an unenviable notoriety for violence in the riots of 1708, 1753, 1767 and 1831. At the beginning of the 19th century it was obvious that the prosperity of Bristol was diminishing, comparatively if not actually, owing to (1) the rise of Liverpool, which had more natural facilities as a port than Bristol could ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... originate in that unclassic section, while the truth is that the laws of polite English are as much violated on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to hold the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... to despair. There are few conditions in life so utterly unenviable as penury and love—to be next door to starving, and at the same time in love. Day after day Shiel, who was thus afflicted, had revelled in Gladys's company, and had intoxicated himself with her beauty, fully aware that ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... now a sudden thought that his position was very peculiar and very unenviable. He had just quarrelled with his best friend, and had just been saved from murdering him, for the sake of a girl whom he had ceased to love (or whom he believed he had ceased to love, which was the same thing just then); and now here was another of Katie's numerous lovers, full of love ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... fourteenth of August Winslow set out from his camp at Fort Beausejour, or Cumberland, on his unenviable errand. He had with him but two hundred and ninety-seven men. His mood of mind was not serene. He was chafed because the regulars had charged his men with stealing sheep; and he was doubly vexed by an untoward incident that ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... countries, a company of the church at Leyden, who had joined in the first emigration, intending to pass in it to America; and in the same author we find that the vessel arrived in the harbour of Charlestown [N. E.] on July 1, 1630. There was a MAY-FLOWER which, in 1648, gained an unenviable notoriety as a slaver. But this was not the MAY-FLOWER which had carried over the first settlers, it being a vessel Of 350 tons, while the genuine MAY-FLOWER was of only 180 tons." Of the first of her two known visits, after her voyage with the Pilgrim company from Leyden, Goodwin says: ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... to the preceding Congress. The practice of putting the entire burden of loss to life or limb upon the victim or the victim's family is a form of social injustice in which the United States stands in unenviable prominence. In both our Federal and State legislation we have, with few exceptions, scarcely gone farther than the repeal of the fellow-servant principle of the old law of liability, and in some of our States even this slight modification of a completely outgrown principle has not yet been secured. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... hilarious mood one night did a decapitating operation on one of the bodies. His loot was the head of an old man with patriarchal beard and he carried it around from one place of debauchery to another, exhibiting it to gaping crowds of a rather unenviable class of citizenship. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... The scandal, which spread throughout the kingdom, placed him in a very unenviable position. The marquis would probably have passed the rest of his life in one of the oubliettes of the Bastile had he not escaped from France. Madame de Montespan, in her wonderfully frank Memoirs, records all these facts without any apparent consciousness of the infamy to which they consign ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A more unenviable honour never fell to ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy. The Italians say "as rude as a Florentine"; and even the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... he needed sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle—and never emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him down and defeated. Then he returned home with a swelling ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... hour, but presently there came the distinct dip of oars. In spite of my unenviable position I felt excited. I thought there were two boats. Naturally there would be. The dinghy was small; crew and confederates could not have ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... "stu bellissimu cuntu" (this very fine story). Ordinarily they begin, as do our own, with the formula, "once upon a time there was." The ending is also a variable formula, often a couplet referring to the happy termination of the tale and the relatively unenviable condition of the listeners. The ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... my own moodiness out into the village street, and suddenly remembering that I was smoking a cigar the harmless, merry-hearted youngster had given me, I hurled it away and walked hotly along the road in a state of mind altogether unenviable. I brought myself to reason in a quarter of an hour, and got back to the inn in time for breakfast; but I know that I made poor company, and sat there glum and silent while my two companions shouted with boisterous laughter, and drank more wine than ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... well-arranged shirt frills in the dirty mixture. The rest of us contrived to keep our legs. The ship was running before the wind, and rolling considerably, and the motion, aided by the wine and the act of plucking aside the flag, might have precipitated the captain into his unenviable situation; he thought otherwise. No sooner was he placed upon his feet, and his mouth sufficiently clear from the salt water decoction of hog-wash, than he collared the poor victim of persecution, and spluttered out, "Mutiny—mu—mu—mutiny—sentry. Gentlemen, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... were distributed as coming from the anti-suffragists—undoubtedly by some vicious element among the men which had its own good reason for opposing us. The "antis" also suffered in this campaign from the "pernicious activity" of their spokesman—a lawyer with an unenviable reputation. After the campaign was over this man declared that it had cost the opponents ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... or two all will be changed; the people owning summer homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the sport will have an unenviable time. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... though he were a good mile away, is a peculiarity of the Persians that has often irritated travellers to the pitch of wishing they had a hot potato and the dexterity to throw it down their throats; and in my present unenviable condition, and its accompanying unenviable frame of mind, I don't mind admitting that I mentally relegated this vociferous melon-vender to a place where infinitely worse than hot potatoes would overtake ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... training, knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship. The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars per—with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists—and he had no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... he follows the squirrels and weasels and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us when we find that he can write a lovely verse and even an ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... 1894) explains and (as I think) amends his position:—"If I had said time instead of the public, I should have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the good books it assailed are not lost, and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... allegorical representations of the union between the divinity and true worshipers; but some interpret them in the most literal way possible. This is done especially by the followers of Vallabha Acharya.[28] These men attained a most unenviable notoriety about twenty years ago, when a case was tried in the Supreme Court of Bombay, which revealed the practice of the most shameful licentiousness by the religious teachers and their female followers, and this as a part of worship! ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... complimentary to her niece-in-law. Mabel's marriage was the signal for a radical reorganization of the Ridgeley domestic establishment, by which Mrs. Sutton was reduced from the busy, responsible situation of housekeeper to the unenviable one of unnoticed ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... of the Acadians on the St. John at this time was a very unenviable one. Fort Boishebert, at the Nerepis, was a frail defence, and they were beginning to be straitened for supplies on account of the vigilance of the English cruisers. Father Germain wrote to the commandant at Annapolis Royal for leave to buy provisions there for the French living on ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... Religion and marriage became a mockery, and every form of impure and vindictive passion walked abroad, with the consciousness that public opinion did not require them to assume even a slight disguise. The fish-women of Paris will long retain an unenviable celebrity for the brutal excess of their rage. The goddess of Reason was worshipped by men, under the form of a living woman entirely devoid of clothing; and in the public streets ladies might be seen who scarcely paid more ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... alas! ye offspring of prolific Thetys, and daughters of Ocean your sire, who rolls around the whole earth in his unslumbering stream; look upon me, see clasped in what bonds I shall keep an unenviable watch on the topmost ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... a moment before filled with rage toward Tarzan of the Apes, stood close to the battling pair, his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to see Sheeta's great fangs sink into the soft throat of the ape-man? Or did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had prompted Tarzan to rush to ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... full of life and fun, she had held for the whole of her married life a sway over her lord and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position of being half slave, half idol in her ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... have ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among us? ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... which the philosophers and statesmen of the West had long been vainly struggling. "The nations of the West"—such was the substance of innumerable discourses which I had heard—"are at present on the high-road to political and social anarchy, and England has the unenviable distinction of being foremost in the race. The natural increase of population, together with the expropriation of the small landholders by the great landed proprietors, has created a dangerous and ever-increasing Proletariat—a great disorganised mass of human ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... that I commanded in Louisiana and Texas my position was a most unenviable one. The service was unusual, and the nature of it scarcely to be understood by those not entirely familiar with the conditions existing immediately after the war. In administering the affairs of those ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... pre-reformatory Russia, was a dark patch in the life of the country at large, doubly dark in the life of the Jews. The power of absolutism, banished by the March revolution from the European West, asserted itself with intensified fury in the land of the North, which had about that time earned the unenviable reputation of the "gendarme of Europe." Thrown back on its last stronghold, absolutism concentrated its energy upon the suppression of all kinds of revolutionary movements. In default of such a movement in Russia itself, this energy broke through the frontier line and found an outlet in the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... to John Calhoun, the same man who, in the pioneer days twenty years before, was county surveyor in Sangamon and had employed Abraham Lincoln as his deputy. He was also the same who three years later received the sobriquet of "John Candlebox Calhoun," having acquired unenviable notoriety from his reputed connection with the "Cincinnati Directory" and "Candlebox" election frauds in Kansas, and with the famous Lecompton Constitution. Calhoun was still in Illinois doing campaign work in propagating the Nebraska faith. He was recognized as a man of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... particularly savage editorial on the matter of over-immigration, and his leaders on political questions of the day were all tinctured with a bitterness and sarcasm quite new to his pen. At midnight that pen dropped from his nerveless hand, and he made his way toward the Palace in a most unenviable state ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Inspector, I am but a child in your estimation, and I feel my position in this matter much more keenly than you do, but I would not be true to the man whom I have unwittingly helped to place in his present unenviable position if I did not tell you that, in my judgment, this cry was a spurious one, employed by the gentleman himself as an ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... She seemed to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little money to live independently, she had ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... the Foam; and such will, in every ease, probably be the concluding scene of piratical craft and their crews now-a-days. They certainly deserve no better; and although their captains, to rise to that unenviable post, must possess some of those fiercer qualities which people are apt to admire, I have no fancy for making them interesting characters, or ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... be, (were it not for its sanitary reputation, it inevitably would be,) one vast residence-park. Except on its extreme northern end, and along its higher ridges, it has,—and, unfortunately, it deserves,—a most unenviable reputation for insalubrity. Here and there, on the southern slope also, there are favored places which are unaccountably free from the pest, but, as a rule, it is, during the summer and autumn, unsafe to live there without having constant recourse to preventive medication, or exercising ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the ship afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly gratitude. No effort of theirs ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... aristocratic class of the Jews is formed of men of wealth—of wealth honourably acquired, and thus open to every man: but unless the strictest regard be had to the education of our co-religionists, we shall have that class, noted only for its money and its ignorance, shamed into an unenviable notoriety by an indifference to the wants of the majority, and dragged downwards with them into one general obscurity. As wealth is within the attainment of poorer orders, the requisite education should be at once provided for them—the characters of all formed upon honest principles—the ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown

... the Narenta, the principal river of Dalmatia and Herzegovina, by one of the numerous mouths which combine to form its delta. Its ancient name was the 'Naro,' and it is also called by Constantine Porphyrogenitus 'Orontium.' Later it acquired an unenviable notoriety, as being the haunt of the 'Narentine Pirates,' who issued thence to make forays upon the coast, and plundered or levied tribute on the trading vessels of the Adriatic. At one time they became so powerful as to be able to carry on a regular system of warfare, and even gain ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... addressed a message, which forcibly illustrates the political position of that body in those times. milianus proposed to resign the whole civil administration into the hands of the senate, reserving to himself only the unenviable burthen of the military interests. His hope was, that in this way making himself in part the creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title against competitors at Rome, whilst the entire military administration going on under ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... of the brothers, and her suffering herself to be prevailed upon to grant the promised interview. The last he held to be a very logical deduction from the premises, inasmuch as it was but natural to suppose that a young lady, whose present condition was so unenviable, would be more than commonly ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious. Each brother had his amours—many of them highly discreditable; but for unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the unenviable palm. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... must stand between him and any duty that service may call on him to perform. On the other hand, without relinquishing this principle, it is often possible, by a little tactful and unostentatious redistribution of troops, to avoid placing a soldier in so unenviable a position as taking part in an attack on his own home. Sometimes, however, this is impossible, as in the ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... not the man to put back into port as long as he could possibly keep the sea. He had a good deal of the Flying Dutchman spirit about him, without the profanity of that far-famed navigator, which has so justly doomed him to so unenviable a notoriety. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... no one on whom he could visit his wrath. Dismissing the under-gardeners curtly, he was forced to return to his work in a very unenviable frame of mind, suspicious ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... to the Keats subscription. I may say that I did not know the list would accompany them—still less that contributions would be so low generally as to leave me near the head of the list—an unenviable sort of parade.... My own opinion about the lecture question is this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its resources: and this should be the absolute test ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord, don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled, and took his departure, and left Genius at school ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nothing to do with the matter, and that he could not waste time in talking about it, was not always present at the meetings, and it sometimes became necessary to depute one or more of the members to visit him. Auteuil, the attorney-general, having been employed on this unenviable errand, begged the council to dispense him from such duty in future, "by reason," as he says, "of the abuse, ill treatment, and threats which he received from Monsieur the governor, when he last ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... and not inconvenient; our landlord is an hosier. I am sure I have a thousand reasons to rejoice that I am so little known: for my present situation is, in every respect, very unenviable; and I would not, for the world, be seen by ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... which I have attributed it, or if my views of their duties and the present importance of their rigid performance were other than they are, I should have cheerfully acquiesced and attempted to find others who would accept the unenviable trust; but I can not consent to appoint directors of the bank to be the subservient instruments or silent spectators of its abuses and corruptions, nor can I ask honorable men to undertake the thankless duty with the certain prospect ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be detained for the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... Pavlovna had asked for the first quarter's allowance. Then worse and worse rumors began to reach him; at last, a tragic-comic story was reported with acclamations in all the papers. His wife played an unenviable part in it. It was the finishing stroke; Varvara ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... the rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the consigne" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Magendie's ferocious cruelty to his victims seems overwhelming. "In France," says Dr. George Wilson, "some of the most eminent physiologists have gained an unenviable notoriety as PITILESS TORTURERS, ... experimenters who would not take the trouble to put out of pain the wretched dogs on which they experimented, even after they had served their purpose, but left them to perish of lingering torture .... It is pleasing to contrast the merciless horrors enacted ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... civilized world to stand aghast. The order of the Duke of Cumberland to grant no quarter to prisoners placed him foremost in the ranks of "British beasts" that have disgraced the pages of history, and earned for him the unenviable title of "The Butcher of Culloden." It has been suggested in extenuation of his fiendish conduct that His Grace was "deep in his cups" the night before the battle, and that the General to whom the order was given, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... occurred, was an unenviable one, for he was placed in the cruel dilemma of either remaining in a home where his presence was not agreeable to the host and hostess, or abruptly leaving without having an understanding with the one he so dearly loved. He chose ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... lighted only by the brilliant moon. They began now to feel that their position was critical, and Bert, who more easily yielded to the depressing effects of circumstances, bemoaned his fate and all the series of events that had led up to their present unenviable plight. He was inclined to blame Harry for ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich



Words linked to "Unenviable" :   awkward, hard, difficult, unwanted, sticky, undesirable



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