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Ill-favoured   Listen
adjective
Ill-favoured, Ill-favored  adj.  Wanting beauty or attractiveness; unattractive; deformed; ugly; ill-looking; usually used of a face; as, an ill-favored countenance. "Ill-favored and lean-fleshed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ill-favoured" Quotes from Famous Books



... he spake, behold there drew near a lean and ill-favoured person, clad in ragged and sad-coloured attire, whose doublet was much out at the elbows, and who looked ever towards the ground; and no sooner did Stagman see him drawing nigh, than he threw his scrip on the ground, and, hurrying through the crowd, he was seen no more. Then I knew ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... pinafores played noisily in the gutters, ouvriers in dust-coloured corduroys bound about the waist with red sashes lurched along, often with a clatter of black varnished sabots. In a doorway one of these fellows, a swarthy brigand, was feeding a particularly ill-favoured mongrel, kneeling beside it and admonishing it to eat. "Allez, vite, mange donc, Helene!" he was saying, and Esther found entertainment in the mangy cur's rejoicing in ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... there and turned the matter over in her mind for this many an hundred time, there came a key into the lock, and the door opened; and thereby entered a tall woman, dark-haired, white-skinned, somewhat young, and not ill-favoured: Goldilind still lay there, till the new-comer said to her in a hard voice, wherein was both threatening and mockery: "Rise up, our Lady! the Dame Elinor saith that it is enough, and that thou art to go forth. Nay, hold ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... made: I don't think any one got more than his share. Of course there were underhand attempts in plenty, and, at least once, open violence—a sudden rush from opposite sides, a growling and spitting like sparks from a smithy; and then, with ears laid flat, two ill-favoured beasts clawed blindly at each other, and a sly and tigerish brindle made away with the morsel. My woman took the thing very coolly I thought, served them all alike, and didn't resent (as I should have done) the unfortunate want of delicacy there was about these vagrants. A cat ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... the garden; and here Horace Walpole describes his seeing George I., in the rooms appropriated to the Duchess of Kendal, next to those of Melusina Schulemberg, or, as she was then called, the Countess of Walsingham. The Duchess of Kendal was then very 'lean and ill-favoured.' 'Just before her,' says Horace, 'stood a tall, elderly man, rather pale, of an aspect rather good-natured than august: in a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. That ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... a dreamy mood, and rubbed my eyes as if I were not wholly awake, and half expected to see the gay-clad company of beautiful men and women change to two or three spindle-legged back-bowed men and haggard, hollow-eyed, ill-favoured women, who once wore down the soil of this land with their heavy hopeless feet, from day to day, and season to season, and year to year. But no change came as yet, and my heart swelled with joy as I thought ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... charming or even attractive; rarely correct in drawing, and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling acutely intense and even dolorous—what is it then that makes Sandro Botticelli so irresistible that nowadays we may have no alternative but to worship or abhor him? The secret is this, that in European painting there has never again been an artist so indifferent ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... was not an ill-favoured knave;[hq][555] A good deal like a vulture in the face, With a hook nose and a hawk's eye, which gave A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave, Was by no means so ugly as his case; But that, indeed, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the midst of the water; and she fell asleep in the boat ere the night had grown very old, and woke up in the morning, not exceeding early, maybe about six o'clock; then she looked ahead and thought presently to see the ill-favoured blotch of the Isle of Nothing on the bosom of the blue waters, whereas it was a fair and cloudless morning of latter May. Sure enough she saw land ahead, and it lay low down on the water, but she deemed from the first that it was green of hue, and as she neared ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... Mrs. Mackenzie, and of Sir Barnes Newcome, fatigue the reader; for whereas in the delineation of his amiable and high-principled characters Thackeray is careful to shade off their bright qualities by a mixture of natural weakness, these ill-favoured portraits stand out in the full glare of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... with sharpe syckles, whiche, forced by the beaste through the corne, did cut down al before it. This tricke," says Googe, "might be used in levell and champion countreys; but with us it wolde make but ill-favoured woorke." [7] The Thames Tunnel was thought an entirely new manifestation of engineering genius; but the tunnel under the Euphrates at ancient Babylon, and that under the wide mouth of the harbour at Marseilles ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... picture of it, with the country everywhere in one of its finest aspects, as winter began to close in. They had started from Geneva the previous morning at four, and in their day's travel Dickens had again noticed what he spoke of formerly, the ill-favoured look of the people in the valleys owing to their hard and stern climate. "All the women were like used-up men, and all the men like a sort of fagged dogs. But the good, genuine, grateful Swiss recognition of the commonest kind word—not too often thrown to them by ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... smooth-faced all but a small moustache; apparently about thirty; plump and not ill-favoured, though his hair was cut horribly close; but a spectator seemed to have his attention taken up at once by the ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... it had not been by so ill-favoured a person, at all events, Tim," replied I; "I cannot return ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... archbishop's side, set up a chattering and a muttering, with now and then a kind of mocking laughter like a madman's meaningless merriment. Nor would he cease until my lord clouted him twice or thrice rudely on his ill-favoured crown with a "Hist, folly, stay thy devil's clatter." Now, this beast it was, one, I suppose, of those apes that King Solomon trafficked in, that gave rise to the saying that a familiar from Hell housed with my lord in Guernsey. ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar

... at the door of my memory. I bid him enter, and I see a tall slim youth, not ill-favoured, wearing well-cut clothes, and carrying a most beautiful, gold-topped Malacca cane delicately in his hand. He is smoking a cigar, and complains to me that his life is a succession of aimless days, and that he cannot find any employment to turn his hand to. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various

... aunt, as puttin' the poker in his hand, she keeked by his shouther, and sid the ill-favoured thing, 'hae a care, sir, what ye're doin'. Back wi' ye, and ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... said, I deny not, of every virtue, of every vice; I desired not to say all but enough. If thou do but read or like these I have spent good hours ill; but if thou shalt hence abjure those vices, which before thou thoughtest not ill-favoured, or fall in love with any of these goodly faces of virtue, or shalt hence find where thou hast any little touch of these evils, to clear thyself, or where any defect in these graces to supply it, neither of us shall need to repent ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... passer-by—loathsome white devilkins harbouring close under the bank to work the springes, Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's journey, with the frog-like structure of the skull, the frog-like limberness of limbs—crafty, slippery, lustful-looking devils, drawn always in outline as though possessed of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... water—that is, neither in the salt sea itself nor yet in the fresh-water rivers—I had to pass down the little stream a mile or more before I came to the proper place for finding the ducks. I went in a small skiff, with no other companion than an ill-favoured cur-dog, with which I had been furnished, and which was represented to me as one of the best ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... a gold cup, my own, shall pay the price of it. Bear me no ill-will, I pray you, learned scribe, and above all tell me no falsehood as the message of the stars you serve. It is the truth I seek, the truth. If only she may be seen, and clasped, I care not how ill-favoured is her face." ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... expected to find the Grand Inquisitor of Madrid a kindly and intelligent, though ill-favoured, prelate; but so it was, and he did nothing but laugh from the beginning to the end of my story, for he would not let me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... more meaning than grammar, custom, or dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; both must be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, they would not "timber" so high—raise such magnificent houses.[663] In other parts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... the whole of that day and the Monday, blew a tremendous gale. "'Twas a more violent storm," said Howard, "than was ever seen before at this time of the year." The retreating English fleet was, scattered, many ships were in peril, "among the ill-favoured sands off Norfolk," but within four or five days all arrived safely in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and more particular for the pleasure of making your young lady's acquaintance—niece, ma'am? daughter, ma'am? granddaughter, by Jove, is it? Hallo! there, mild 'n, I say, stop packin'.' This was to the ill-favoured person with the broken nose. 'Bring us a couple o' glasses and a bottle o' curacoa; what are you fear'd on, my dear? this is Lord Lollipop, here, a reg'lar charmer, wouldn't hurt a fly, hey Lolly? Isn't he pretty, Miss? and I'm Sir ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... ever brought with him the articles which he missed. It happened, therefore, upon the eve of Huxford's departure from Quebec, that he found, upon returning to his lodgings, that his landlady and her two ill-favoured sons, who assisted her in her trade, were waiting up for him over a bowl of punch, which they cordially invited him to share. It was a bitterly cold night, and the fragrant steam overpowered any suspicions which the young Englishman ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... an answer, Leonard looked hard at the newcomer, and thought he had never beheld so ill-favoured a person before. Every feature in his face was distorted. His mouth was twisted on one side, his nose on the other, while his right eyebrow was elevated more than an inch above the left; added to which he squinted intolerably, had a long fell of straight sandy hair, a sandy beard and moustache, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... had seemed rough and ill-favoured to me when first I saw them, time and comradeship had worn off the feeling, but it came back to me as I looked on these men, and most of all on this Rorik; so that for a little I hated myself for being in their ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... or, to be more correct, Sir William Scott, Junr., was caught and put in the dungeon. Sir Gideon Murray decided to hang him, but his lady interposed: "Would ye hang the winsome Laird o' Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw Meg he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. 'Tis Baroco and Baralipton—[Two terms of the ancient scholastic logic.]—that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not she; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she that calms and appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and who teaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain imaginary epicycles, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... was come but fortunately the sky was clear, for the Strand was ill lighted. St. Mary's Church, not long since consecrated, St. Clement's Church, loomed large and shadowy in the narrow roadway, narrowing still more towards Temple Bar past the ill-favoured and unsavoury Butcher's Row on the north side of the street, where the houses of rotting plaster and timber with overhanging storeys frowned upon the passer-by and suggested deeds of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... supposed, that bilge didn't hurt it, as I tugged at the plank on my hands and knees, but I should have myself preferred a more accessible and less humid wine-cellar than the cavities among slimy ballast from which I dug the bottles. I regarded my hard-won and ill-favoured pledges of a meal with ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... amongst such people, when he would have received a reception so different on any other island of Polynesia. The women are naturally ugly, and the hard work they have to do, with their general mode of life, render their appearance yet more displeasing. The men are rather less ill-favoured, though they are stunted and lean, and covered with ulcers and leprosy scars. Arrows and bows are their only weapons, and, according to themselves, the former, with their very fine bone tips, soldered on with extremely tenacious gum, inflict mortal wounds. They therefore ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... extinguished instantly those sparks of better humour kindled by the dinner and the chest. The group fell again to an ill-favoured silence, and Hemstead began to touch the banjo, as was his habit of an evening. His repertory was small: the chords of Home, Sweet Home fell under his fingers; and when he had played the symphony, he instinctively raised up his voice. "Be it never so 'umble, there's no plyce like 'ome," he sang. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... but he was too old by that time for the egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough to drive you wild. So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they had watched him safe off to one of his own 'venticles, but it seems there had been warning that the justices were on the look-out, so home he came. And behold, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I have made my objection against it; and when they have answered, that it was but a piece of civility, I have told them, it is not a comely sight. Some indeed have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked why they made baulks, why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favoured go. Not that I have been thus kept, because of any goodness in me, more than any other, but God has been merciful to me, and has kept me, to whom I pray that he will keep me still, not only from this, but every ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Esmond's wife: others, that she was forced to retreat after a great battle which took place at Whitehall, between her ladyship and Lady Dorchester, Tom Killigrew's daughter, whom the king delighted to honour, and in which that ill-favoured Esther got the better of our elderly Vashti. But her ladyship for her part always averred that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the banishment of the two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the sovereign in giving ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... leave him waiting for his prey, with a dark sardonic smile on his ill-favoured countenance, and return to Marguerite, who is waiting in the granary for her lover, confident that "all is well," and having no thoughts but pleasant ones concerning the coming meeting. Even the remembrance of Hirzel's absence brings no disquietude ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth

... governor that afternoon, but, being told that his excellency was engaged, had said another hour would do. This man was the prisoner. He came in under guard, but he bore himself quietly enough and made a low bow to the governor. He was not an ill-favoured fellow. His eye was steely cold, but his face was hearty and round, and remarkably free from viciousness. He had a cheerful air and an alert freedom of manner, which suggested good-fellowship ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... wad sober me or ony ane," said the matron, "Aweel, Tibb, a lass like me wasna to lack wooers, for I wasna sae ill-favoured that the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... felt that the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of nets and worm-eaten boats. The kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations were kept within reasonable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the wife of the Elector's chief minister of state, was—with the connivance of her despicable husband, who saw therein the means to his own advancement—the acknowledged mistress of Ernest Augustus. She was a fleshly, gauche, vain, and ill-favoured woman. Malevolence sat in the creases of her painted face, and peered from her mean eyes. Yet, such as she was, the Elector Ernest loved her. His son's taste for ugly women would appear ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... Cernon, where the houses of dark-gray stone, built on a hillside, are overtopped by the round tower of a small mediaeval fortress which has been patched up and put to some modern use. I thought the people very ill-favoured by nature here, but perhaps they are not more so than others in the district. The harshness of nature is strongly reflected in all faces. Having passed a man on the bank of the stream washing his linen—presumably ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... the dust, what others overlook and lose. Every man's presence is a kind of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions: and even impudent men look for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him, which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill-favoured, and shews more scurvily than another. A bawdy jest shall shame him more than a bastard another man, and he that got it shall censure him among the rest. And he is coward to nothing more than an ill tongue, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... the drawing-room, and found Mr. Jno. Peters with an expression on his ill-favoured face, which looked like one of consternation, of uneasiness, even ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... when this lewd story's told? When it shall be confirmed, Philander the young, the brisk and gay Philander, who never failed the woman he scarce wished for, never baulked the amorous conceited old, nor the ill-favoured young, yet when he had extended in his arms the young, the charming fair and longing Sylvia, the untouched, unspotted, and till then, unwishing lovely maid, yielded, defenceless, and unguarded ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his father,"—and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the widow's ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... by the painful accuracy of this appellative, her husband was understood to mutter that he had rather be an ill-favoured worm than an overdressed parrot with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... how difficult it is to get rid of a phrase, which the world is once grown fond of, though the occasion that first produced it, be entirely taken away. For several years past, if a man had but an ill-favoured nose, the deep-thinkers of the age would some way or other contrive to impute the cause to the prejudice of his education. From this fountain were said to be derived all our foolish notions of justice, piety, love of our country, all ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall of the court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor, but actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old wrinkled reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: "A charm to make my young wife love me!" Then an ill-favoured hag behind a blanket: "A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has taken instead of me!" Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: "A charm to make me bear children!" A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... who has clumsy hands will paint similar hands in his works, and the same will occur with any limb, unless long study has taught him to avoid it. Therefore, O Painter, look carefully what part is most ill-favoured in your own person and take particular pains to correct it in your studies. For if you are coarse, your figures will seem the same and devoid of charm; and it is the same with any part that may be good or ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... described to him that great labouring band that had come before his eyes, and he said that there was not over the chariot-pole of life a power that could withstand its might. And, as they spake thus with each other, they saw Mider standing before them; high was he girt, and ill-favoured was the face that he showed; and Eochaid arose, and he gave welcome to him. "Thy welcome is such as I expected when I came," said Mider. "Cruel and senseless hast thou been in thy treatment of me, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... maidens! This is the time for the pretty who can have many chances, and for the ill-favoured who have few. Matrimony to be had— hot, eaten, and done with as easily as berlingozzi! And see!" here the conjuror held up a cluster of tiny bags. "To every bride I give a Breve with a secret in it—the secret alone ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... Horace opened the door and called in Sylvia and her mother, who were, as was only to be expected, overcome with joy on seeing the head of the family released from his ignoble condition of a singularly ill-favoured quadruped. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... birth to a rank above his present station, so gentle and gentleman-like he always appeared. Even on this occasion, when disfigured by paint, pitch, and tar, copiously daubed over his delicate person, to render him fit company for his papa old Neptune, he still looked as if his ill-favoured parents had stolen him, and were trying in vain to disguise their roguery by rigging him up in their ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... and saw an ill-favoured man, closely cropped, with a broad-faced, pock-marked woman on his arm, ruddy with liquor and the satisfaction of being on the brink of a gratified desire. They jocosely saluted the outgoing couple, and went forward in front of Jude and ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... street, All strangely fell upon him everywhere The things he saw and heard of foul or fair. The thronging of the folk that filled the ways; The hubbub of the street and market-place; The sound of heavy wain-wheels on the stones; The comely faces and ill-favoured ones; The girls with apple-cheeks and hair of gold; The grey locks and the wrinkles of the old;— All these remote and unfamiliar Seem'd, and himself a something from afar, Looking at men as shadows on the wall And even the veriest shadow ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... to the first word of my title and remind them that we are primarily out to be amused—not, it is true, without some hope of picking up morsels of knowledge by the way. If the manner is light, I can only say, in the words of Touchstone, that it is "an ill-favoured thing, sir, but my own; a poor humour ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... crimson waistcoat, both overlaid with broad and tarnished gold lace, and his silk stockings on thick swollen legs, with great buckled shoes, straddling on the grass, were rolled up over his knees to his short breeches. This ill-favoured old fellow, with a powdered wig that came down to his shoulders, had a dice-box in each hand, and was apparently playing his left against his right, and calling the throws with a ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... faith!" cried Bennet. "Black, and black-feathered. Here is an ill-favoured shaft, by my sooth! for black, they say, bodes burial. And here be words written. Wipe the blood away. What ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... exercised a rude potency upon the feelings, and followed the words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fire. If he continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities the situation might develop, for Lawrence was not sufficiently in earnest in any direction to play what has been called the ill-favoured part of a Joseph, but in his heart of hearts, this Joseph wished Potiphar would keep his wife in order. And, strange to say, Yvonne was not far wide of the mark. She believed that Joseph was a sinner but not a willing one: and Jack ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... tramp, and see no reason why you should interrupt us thus with your hooting, you ill-favoured owl," ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... from his forehead in short yet dishevelled curls, his whole appearance stamped with the morning negligence which usually follows midnight dissipation, lay a young man of about nineteen years. His features were neither handsome nor ill-favoured, and his stature was small, slight, and somewhat insignificant, but not, perhaps, ill-formed either for active enterprise or for muscular effort. Such, reader, is the picture of the young prodigal who occupied the apartments I have described, and such (though somewhat flattered ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Soosie, with tearful eyes and tremulous hands, hysterically implored us to protect her from a fate worse than death. A message brought Dan, who first disdained to take Duckbill seriously. Told how Soosie had been wooed with gifts, and that her maternal uncle had officiously bestowed her upon the gaunt, ill-favoured king of the camp in accordance with tribal law, which regarded her as a mere chattel at the disposal of the whim and fancy of the nearest relative or at the demand of the most authoritative man, he became concerned and installed himself as ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... the force of that Stentorian sound, Rose Belcour, dressed, and soon the lobby found. About the door a throng of varlets stood, A grinning and ill-favoured brotherhood, That scoff and gibe at every wight that wears Linen less black, or better coat than theirs. For these, young Belcour was too fair a mark; 'Make way,' cries one, 'he's going to the Park: His horses wait; he's going for a ride.' 'Fool, 'tis his tilbury,' another cried; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... round, with a wicker at each end to admit the live and dead stock that go or are taken on board; the centre of the boat (if such it can be called) is occupied by four lean, ill-favoured hacks, who walk round and round, as if in a threshing machine, and work the paddles at each side. There is a sort of pen for ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... worthy villager envied him his power over unsophisticated maidenhood—a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it. Personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy—made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like 'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped in lamp-oil. On occasion he ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... a man, and curiously endeavoured to know out such injuries as were done to my master. About noone there came a woman into the Milhouse, very sorrowfull, raggedly attired, with bare feete, meigre, ill-favoured, and her hayre scattering upon her face: This woman tooke the Baker by the hand, and faining that she had some secret matter to tell him, went into a chamber, where they remained a good space, till all the corne was ground, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... Eighteenth Century rum and whiskey flasks recently collected by Mrs. Norris. There were, additionally, a porcelain image of two farmers, dos a dos, one with rosy cheeks and flashing eye labelled "water," and the other, haggard and ill-favoured, labelled "gin"; also a brace of saturnine china cats. Above the mantel stretched an expanse of oak panelling which supported the portrait of Mrs. Norris's great-great-grandfather in a heavy gilt frame. The old ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... him, never allow herself to be really angry with him, though he so frequently refused to bow to her dictation. And she loved Marian Leslie also, though Marian was so sweet and lovely and she herself so harsh and ill-favoured. She loved Marian, though Marian would often be impertinent. She forgave the flirting, the light-heartedness, the love of amusement. Marian, she said to herself, was young and pretty. She, Miss Jack, had never known Marian's temptation. ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope

... said Toole, who had no reliance upon the wisdom of the female garrison, and had serious misgivings lest at the first stout summons the maids should open the door, and the ill-favoured pair establish themselves in occupation of poor Mrs. Nutter's domicile, 'I'll not object to the notices being received. There's the servant up at the window there—but you must not make a noise; Mrs. Nutter, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... little is in their power; for what, indeed, truly desirable, can they bestow on us? Can they give beauty to the deformed, strength to the weak, or health to the infirm? Surely if they could we should not see so many ill-favoured faces haunting the assemblies of the great, nor would such numbers of feeble wretches languish in their coaches and palaces. No, not the wealth of a kingdom can purchase any paint to dress pale Ugliness in the bloom of that ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... feebleness. She betrayed signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a look at Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign herself to him) that it would not have been so difficult with an ill-favoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have been a horrible exultation to cast off her youth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hand I refused when I took up with wise Jasper, once brought two of them to my mother's tan, when hankering after my company; they did nothing but carp at each other's words, and a pretty hand they made of it. Ill-favoured dogs they were; and their attempts at what they called wit almost as unfortunate ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... charms {34} that were naturally potent with a beauty-loving people. He had been very carefully trained by the prudent Cosimo, so that he excelled in physical exercises and could also claim a place among the most intellectual in Florence. Although singularly ill-favoured, he had personal qualities which attracted men and women. He spared no pains to array himself with splendour whenever he appeared in public. At tournaments he wore a costume ornamented with gold and silver thread, and displayed the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... look thus to one cloister-bred, and 'tis true enough that godliness is far from most men; but if a hermit's robe may cover a rascal, often enough a good heart lies under an ill-favoured face and tongue. See, lad," as another turn in the road brought them in sight of Westminster, "there lies thy new world, ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... "is a wonderful, sympathetic being! What a delicate comprehension of everything, what a loving heart, what absence of egoism! And how comes it that such girls bloom with us, and in the provinces,—and in such surroundings into the bargain! She is both sickly, and ill-favoured, and not young,—but what a capital wife she would make for an honest, well-educated man! That is the person with whom one ought to fall in love!..." Aratoff meditated thus ... but on his arrival in Moscow the matter took ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... wearily along behind them, looking sometimes from side to side at the various people passing by, with eyes no less furtive than his mother's. She was a tall and handsome woman, with extravagantly marine clothes and much false hair. Her companion, a bulky and ill-favoured man, glanced superciliously at the ladies in the deck chairs, bestowing always a more attentive scrutiny than usual on a very pretty girl, who was lying reading midway down, with a white lace scarf draped round ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... close upon him. The first to ride past was Herbert Mabyn. His livid face was alight with triumph; and he carried a new Winchester slung over his back. An ill-favoured breed youth followed; his face struck a chord in Garth's memory; but so hard is it to distinguish alien faces that for the moment he could not place him. Next there came six packhorses, laden with food and camp outfit, and driven by the next rider, a breed woman, whose ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... desolation remain. Dreary flats thinly scattered over with ilex, and barren hillocks crowned by solitary towers, were the only objects we perceived for several miles. Now and then we passed a few black ill-favoured sheep feeding by the way- side, near a ruined sepulchre, just such animals as an ancient would have sacrificed to the Manes. Sometimes we crossed a brook, whose ripplings were the only sounds which broke the general stillness, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... every repetition of the horrid contact each instinctively repelled it with the greater haste; and the process, natural although it was, began to tell upon the nerves of the companions. Macfarlane made some ill-favoured jest about the farmer's wife, but it came hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in silence. Still their unnatural burden bumped from side to side; and now the head would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their shoulders, and now the drenching sack-cloth ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour, and there sat the Laird his leesome lane, excepting that he had beside him a great, ill-favoured jackanape, that was a special pet of his; a cankered beast it was, and mony an ill-natured trick it played—ill to please it was, and easily angered—ran about the haill castle, chattering and yowling, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... his sombrero slouched towards the light, as I thought or suspected, for the concealment of his face. And vet it was not an ill-favoured one. On the contrary, it was open and pleasing; no doubt had been handsome beforetime, and whatever caused its melancholy expression had lined and clouded it. It was this expression that had struck me on first ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... night. Next morn they rose, And to the Ford of battle forward came. That day a great, ill-favoured, lowering cloud Upon Ferdiah's face Cuchullin saw. "Badly," said he, "dost thou appear this day, Ferdiah, for thy hair has duskier grown This day, and a dull stupour dims thine eyes, And thine own ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... agony of crying at the sight, needed that Stephen should spread out both hands before her, and show her the divided apple, before she would believe that his thumb was in its right place, and at night screamed out in her sleep that the ill-favoured man ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... one large stone house in the centre of the village, and to this I rode. It was the house of the priest—a snuffy and ill-favoured old man who had not a civil answer to any of our questions. An uglier fellow I never met, but, my faith, it was very different with his only daughter, who kept house for him. She was a brunette, a rare thing in Russia, with creamy ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you," answered Sancho; "it was because I have been looking at you for some time by the light of the torch held by that unfortunate, and verily your worship has got of late the most ill-favoured countenance I ever saw: it must be either owing to the fatigue of this combat, or else to the want ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... had not been unhandsome; debauchery and sloth had puffed and coarsened him. Joseph, on the other hand, had never been aught but ill-favoured. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... though it itself hardly sees anything with its huge, yellow, timorously and dozily blinking eyes. Confirmed, inexorable grief had laid upon the poor musician its ineffaceable seal, had distorted and disfigured his already ill-favoured figure; but for any one who knew enough not to stop at first impressions, something unusual was visible in this half-wrecked being. A worshipper of Bach and Handel, an expert in his profession, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... with and without a wig that its use made a plain face presentable. There is a good election story of Daniel O'Connell. It is related during a fierce debate on the hustings, O'Connell with his biting witty tongue, attacked his opponent on account of his ill-favoured countenance. But, not to be outdone, and thinking to turn the gathering against O'Connell, his adversary called out, "Take off your wig, and I'll warrant that you'll prove the uglier." The witty Irishman immediately ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... almost amounting to vacancy was there now, and, except that she sang, you might almost have fancied her a corpse. In her voice, also, there had once been beauty and feeling, and here again the traces were small indeed. From time to time, she was stopped by fits of coughing, when an ill-favoured hunchback, who accompanied her on a tambourine, swore and scowled at her. She sang a song of sentiment, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... not even in general appearance. He has six short legs, which he well knows how to use; he is a gad-about, a trot-about. In the adult state the male is correctly garbed in wing-cases, like the true Beetle that he is. The female is an ill-favoured thing who knows naught of the delights of flying: all her life long she retains the larval shape, which, for the rest, is similar to that of the male, who himself is imperfect so long as he has not achieved ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... men; and so say men of lore that many of the kin of the Mere-men, who are come of Egil, have been the goodliest folk; yet, for all that, this kindred have differed much herein, for it is said that some of them have been accounted the most ill-favoured of men: but in that kin have been also many men of great prowess in many wise, such as Kiartan, the son of Olaf Peacock, and Slaying-Bardi, and Skuli, the son of Thorstein. Some have been great bards, too, in that kin, as Biorn, the champion of Hit-dale, ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous

... In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and its contingencies have no claim. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... me sourly, suspicion writ athwart his round, ill-favoured face, But my motley was hidden from his sight. My cloak, my hat and boots allowed naught of my true condition to appear, and might as well have covered a lordling as a jester. Yet his inveterate surliness the rascal could ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... wasna a'thegether for sake of the money, Dougal thought, but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour; and there sat the laird his leesome lane, excepting that he had beside him a great, ill-favoured jackanape that was a special pet of his. A cankered beast it was, and mony an ill-natured trick it played; ill to please it was, and easily angered—ran about the haill castle, chattering and rowling, and pinching and biting ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... sea-chest and an open basket, containing even now a few rotting oranges, some damaged tapes, and such articles as are vended by small hawkers. Standing by the bed-side was a lad with an intelligent, not ill-favoured, countenance, though sickly, and expressive of deep grief, as he gazed on the face of one who had ever been a kind mother to him, and from whom he now knew full well that he was ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... tragic writer, first brought forward on this stage Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS, a girl about twenty, extremely ill-favoured by nature. DUGAZON, the actor, next introduced Madame XAVIER, a very handsome and elegant woman. Lastly, Mademoiselle RAUCOURT presented her pupil, Mademoiselle GEORGES WEIMER, a young girl of perfect beauty. Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS played Phedre, in RACINE'S tragedy of that name, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... was at length slowly opened, and a most ill-favoured and inhospitable-looking dame demanded, in a sullen voice, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... against the impostor who had written and sent it to the Court, addressed himself to Heudicourt, whom he treated in the most cruel fashion. "The good little fellow" was strangely taken aback, and wished to defend himself; but Villars produced proofs that could not be contradicted. Thereupon the ill-favoured dog avowed his turpitude, and had the audacity to approach Villars in order to speak low to him; but the Marechal, drawing back, and repelling him with an air of indignation, said to him, aloud, that with scoundrels like him he wished for no privacy. Gathering up, his pluck at this, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... and honourable. Miss Flite's crazes do not prevent her from being full of all womanly sympathies. Here I think lies the charm these characters had for Dickens. As he was fond of showing a soul of goodness in the ill-favoured and uncouth, so he liked to make men feel that even in a disordered intellect all kindly virtues might find a home, and a happy one. M. Taine may call this "horrible" if he likes. I think myself it would be possible to find ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... forward to receive them, was a tall, bony woman of very swarthy complexion, with beady eyes and teeth prominent as a rat's. But if ill-favoured, she seemed, at least, well-intentioned, in addition to which the tricolour scarf of office round La Boulaye's waist was a thing that commanded respect and servility, however much it might be the insignia of a Government of liberty, equality, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... we speak, there sat with Lord Downy a rude, ill-favoured man, brought into juxtaposition with the peer by the unfortunate relation that connected the latter with so many men of similar stamp and station. He seemed more at home in the apartment than the owner, and took some ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... but one road, which went no further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to the European. Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson. To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there was something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin white hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor. Yet, though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of fear in his ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... could scarcely keep from laughing, for the idea of sending the beautiful Freya, the joy and delight of Asgard, to be the wife of this ill-favoured Frost Giant was ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... of worthy yeomen or vavassors, or cots of good husbandmen. Here and there was a castle or strong-house, and here and there long rows of ugly hovels, or whiles houses, big tall and long, but exceeding foul and ill-favoured, such as Ralph had not yet seen the like of. And when he asked of Clement concerning all this, he said: "It is as I have told thee, that here be no freemen who work afield, nay, nor villeins either. All those whom ye have seen working have been ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing pathos, shall remain in the original for me. Horace has disgraced himself to something the same tune; but what Horace throws out with an ill-favoured laugh, Villon dwells on with an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on your chin I should take you for a girl; and by the finger-nails of St. Luke, no ill-favoured one neither." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... where they are afterwards set upon by the men, and strangled. The women take care of the children. Such of them as are beautiful are sold at a high price to the brothels of Delhi, or other large cities; while the boys and ill-favoured girls are sold for servants at a more moderate rate. These murders are perpetrated perhaps five hundred miles from the homes of the unfortunate victims; and the children thus obtained, deprived of all their relatives, are never inquired after. Even should any of their kin be alive, they ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... much broader made than any natives I had yet seen in Borneo, but were of far less pleasing countenance and more ferocious aspect than our friends the Kanowits, scarcely deigning to look at the launch as we passed them, but sweeping along down stream with a scowl on their ill-favoured features. ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... beauty. The taste of the day was altogether for light, sandy-haired, small-featured women, like Queen Elizabeth or her namesake of Hardwicke, so that Cis was looked on as a sort of crow, and her supposed parents were pitied for having so ill-favoured a daughter, so unlike all their families, except one black-a-vised Talbot grandmother, whose portrait had been ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of Fangalii; it was difficult for failure to be more complete. But the other consequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediately face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity. Knappe was mourning the defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast over the ruin of his own career, when Mullan boarded him. The successor of Leary served himself, in that bitter moment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to the foreigner, who had been prevented by the noise he heard inside from advancing beyond the middle of the ante-chamber, a spectacle that must have indeed amazed him. I saw a man extremely well dressed, but with a particularly ill-favoured countenance. ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... and women have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the ill-favoured and unattractive. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... his native land, or feel the solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure, ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony—an ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer on its back—he rode the three miles to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... the butcher knelt and lifted him against his knee. He struck me as ill-favoured enough—not to say ghastly—with the dust and blood on his face (for a splinter had laid open his cheek), and its complexion an unhealthy white against his matted hair. I took note that he ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... your plagues multiply upon you)—poor friendless wanderers, who come up to every lonely pedestrian, at once to remind him that it is not good for man to be alone, and to alleviate his solitude with your company; good-natured, rough, ill-favoured dogs, with whom our acquaintance has been extensive, dull indeed would the Pincian appear, were it deprived of your grotesque forms and awkward but well-meant gambols! The life of a Campagna sheep-dog, kept half starved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... race numbering about 7000, and once numerous and powerful. But the Siwashes of Wrangell were a miserable-looking lot, the men apparently physically inferior to the women, some of whom would not have been ill-favoured, had it not been for the disgusting habit of daubing their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, which is supposed to keep off mosquitoes, and which gives them the grotesque appearance of Christy Minstrels. Tattooing no longer prevails amongst the Thlinkits, but the men still ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... it is by loving them that he makes us love them. If the figures he paints give us a life-like impression, it is because they lived not only in his imagination but also in his heart.... Daudet can feel in his heart that love which Dickens felt towards those who are ill-favoured or poor. His favourite heroes are especially those who are sensitive, and who are made wretched by their sensitiveness. In order to create Jack he left the Nabab, which he had already begun, and wrote in less than a year that book which ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... town will, without doubt, be the Mecca in France of the British soldier for all time. This place, above all others, was always mentioned with a voice of reverence and awe, and is hallowed by the presence of the gallant dead who helped in its defence. It was truly the most ill-favoured sector on the whole of the front held ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... can be proved to be no better than common toupees,[182] as a judicious eye may soon discover by their awkward, clumsy, ungenteel gait and behaviour, by their unskilfulness in dress, even with the advantage of wearing our habits, by their ill-favoured countenances, with an air of impudence and dulness peculiar to the rest of their brethren; who have not yet arrived at that transcendent pitch of assurance. Although, it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these counterfeits ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... two other prisoners being kept back for the present. Then came Demdike, in a leathern jerkin and blood-red hose, fitting closely to his sinewy limbs, and wrapped in a houppeland of the same colour as the hose, with a coil of rope round his neck. He walked between two ill-favoured personages habited in black, whom he had chosen as assistants. A band of halberdiers brought up the rear. The procession moved slowly along,—the passing-bell tolling each minute, and a muffled drum sounding hollowly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... composer, emerged from the gare du Nord, and lightly swinging the valise that contained his wardrobe, proceeded to the rue des Trois Freres. Never had it looked dirtier, or sweeter. He threw himself on Tricotrin's neck; embraced the concierge—which took her breath away, since she was ill-favoured and most disagreeable; fared sumptuously for one franc fifty at the Cafe du Bel Avenir—where he narrated adventures abroad that surpassed de Rougemont's; and ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... I met a pretty little brunette with a rich southern colour in her cheeks, charmingly coifed la bordelaise, and tripping jauntily along with a coffee-pot in her hand. It was pleasant to look at a nice face again after all the ill-favoured visages that had risen up against me during the second half of the day, and so I stopped this pretty girl and asked her to tell me which was the best hotel in the place. She would not answer the question, but she mentioned a hotel which she said was as good as any. Thither I went, and ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... disagreeable, that it is not possible people can bear me. Ah! fortunate indeed are they who possess an agreeable exterior! They win the good-will of people if they only show themselves. It is so easy for them to be amiable, and to be beloved! But difficult, very difficult is it for those who are ill-favoured as I!" ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... by crook the goodman got him six hired folk; three men, two of whom were young, and three women, all young and one comely, one ill-favoured, and the other betwixt and between. It must be said by the way, that if he had abided the spring for getting these new folk he would scarce have hired them, for the repute of Wethermel for scant housekeeping had gone wide about; but when folk heard that Master Nicholas was hiring folk ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... After a prayer to Athena to aid them, they went silently towards the bivouac. It chanced that Hector too had thought of a similar plan and that Dolon had offered to reconnoitre the Greek position. He was a wealthy man, ill-favoured to look upon, but swift of foot, and had asked that his reward should be the horses and ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... nobodies in the eyes of Captain Drawlock; they were a part of his cargo, for which he was not responsible. The important part of his consignment were four unmarried women; three of them were young, good-looking, and poor; the other ill-favoured, old, but rich. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... the air as though she said, "Any one who wants to meddle with me will get the worst of it." There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came—a massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood by. "Wot's the row?" he demanded, quickly. "Wot's up? 'Ave it out fair! Joe Mawks 'll stand ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... with Count Rosenberg, who treated him well, and reposed much confidence in him. Neither had Kelly any great objection to remain; but a new passion had taken possession of his breast, and he was laying deep schemes to gratify it. His own wife was ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was comely and agreeable; and he longed to make an exchange of partners without exciting the jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was a difficult matter; but to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... collected and arranged by a literary hack or "devil." The term "printer's devil" for the errand boy in a printing office probably combines this idea with that of his being black with ink. The common notions of the devil as black, ill-favoured, malicious, destructive and the like, have occasioned the application of the term to certain animals (the Tasmanian devil, the devil-fish, the coot), to mechanical contrivances (for tearing up cloth or separating wool), to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... know nothing about admirals here,' said the sergeant of the guard. 'The time for seeing prisoners is over for the day, and if you do not take your ill-favoured body out of this I may try the weight o' my halberd ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the travelling farmer, or even persons higher in rank, occasionally call, which has a decent stable, and whose liquors are of a genuine character, is almost deserted by the men who seek the reeking tap of the ill-favoured public which forms the clubhouse of all the vice of the village. While the farmer or passing stranger, calling at the decent house really for refreshment, drinks but a glass or two and departs, the frequenters of the low place never quit their seats till the law compels them, so that ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... note a rare word, as in {omicron upsilon rho eta alpha sigma / mu epsilon nu / pi rho omega tau omicron nu}, where the poet perhaps employs {omicron upsilon rho eta alpha sigma} not in the sense of mules, but of sentinels. So, again, of Dolon: 'ill-favoured indeed he was to look upon.' It is not meant that his body was ill-shaped, but that his face was ugly; for the Cretans use the word {epsilon upsilon epsilon iota delta epsilon sigma}, 'well-favoured,' to denote ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... certainly heard one merry laugh as I was making for my car, and it was at my own expense. A raw-boned, black-haired woman, "tall, as Joan of France or English Moll," insisted that I should buy some singularly ill-favoured apples of her. As I declined for the last time she fired a parting shot, "An' why won't ye buy me apples? Sure they're big and round and plump like yerself, aghra"—a sally vastly to the taste of the bystanders. It struck me, however, that the people generally ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... rhinoceroses, tigers, ounces, and other wild beasts, and then past Gangitanu, inhabited by the Gigahui, a wild gigantic people, some ten and some eleven spans high, of whom they saw fourteen of both sexes. They have good complexions, being white and red, but very ill-favoured features. Antonio gave them some procelain dishes and silk, for which they seemed thankful, and brought some cows and deer in return, but their language could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... this work Martin Marprelate says in his Epistle (Arber, p. 42), 'His Lordship of Winchester is a great Clarke, for he hath translated his Dictionarie, called Cooper's Dictionarie, verbatim out of Robert Stephanus his Thesaurus, and ill-favoured too, they say!' This was, however, the criticism of an adversary; Cooper had added to Stephens's work many accessions from his editions of Sir Thomas Elyot, and other sources; his Thesaurus was the basis of later Latin-English dictionaries, and ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray

... six times a day; and, moreover, I was led to make the change on hearing that the landlord of the 'Welcome Home' was also intending to sail as seaman in this same ship. My new acquaintance led me to the house, an ill-favoured-looking den, but clean inside, and after a short consultation with John Railton, the landlord, arranged for my entertainment until the Golden Wave should weigh anchor. This done, and a friendly glass taken ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady—the Duchess of Kendal—stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue riband ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... And a well-fed, ill-favoured gentleman he was, as ever served Her Majesty at Portland. Tom was a little frightened at first; for he thought it was Grimes. But he soon saw his mistake: for Grimes always looked a man in the face; and this fellow never did. And when he spoke, it was fire and smoke; and ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... ailing woman turned restlessly on her pallet. The big, awkward, ill-favoured old man stood with his disproportionately long arms hanging by his sides, staring at her, unaware that his presence half undid the good the leaping flames were ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... has two flowering seasons; one in summer, of the majority of plants; and the other in winter, of Acanthaceae, Bauhinia, Dillenia, Bombax, etc. Of these the former are abundant, and render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, and purple blossoms. Coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled through the air, languid Bengalees had replaced the active mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low degree teemed at every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught of my mountain dog; and the tropics, with all their beauty of flower and genial warmth, looked as forbidding ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... reputed best shoer of horses in the neighbourhood; and consequently was, as the priest had said, able to maintain a family: in fact, Denis had the reputation of hoarded wealth, for it was said he had thirty or forty pounds in the Loan Fund Office at Carrick-on-Shannon. He was a hard-working, ill-favoured, saving man; but, as he was able to keep a comfortable home over a wife, he had no difficulty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... with him at once—as I have explained before, I am one of those to whom a first impression means a great deal. He was not very tall, though strong-looking and well-made enough. He was not very handsome, though none so ill-favoured. He was just an ordinary fair young Englishman, four or five-and-twenty years of age, with merry blue eyes and one of the pleasantest expressions that I ever saw. At once I felt that he was a sympathetic soul and full of the milk of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... world of times after that. I am afraid my poor mother thought me a sad rogue, for I would slip away from the shop for a whole afternoon together, on the plea of needing a walk; but my walk always led me to that terrible inn. I soon became a familiar figure to its ill-favoured master and his beautiful niece. The landlord of the Skull and Spectacles had been a seaman in his youth, and told tales of the sea to guests who paid their score. He had a cadet brother who was a ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... to meet him out of the town. He then hastened to the stable, but found, to his unspeakable mortification, that Peregil, in his abundant care, had taken the key. Time being precious, Don Rodrigo, afraid of causing a disturbance, was fain to avail himself of the benefit of an ill-favoured looking mule that stood ready saddled in an outhouse. He doubted not that Peregil would bring his horse after him, and render compensation for the mule, which indeed, from the miserable appearance of the beast, would be no ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... and Eugenie is left with the millions. Until now she had waited for the wandering lover's return; but he, engaging in the slave-trade, has lost all the generous impulses of his youth, and comes back only to deny his early affection and marry the ill-favoured daughter of a Marquis. Eugenie takes a noble revenge for this desertion by paying her dead uncle's debts, which Charles had repudiated, and she marries the notary's son, who leaves her ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton



Words linked to "Ill-favoured" :   ugly, ill-favored



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