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Unwieldy   Listen
adjective
Unwieldy  adj.  Not easily wielded or carried; unmanageable; bulky; ponderous. "A fat, unwieldy body of fifty-eight years old."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Unwieldy" Quotes from Famous Books



... the unwieldy traveling-carriages, drawn by several horses, came in sight, in which the wealthy Roman was wont to take his ease on a long journey, or whenever a particularly splendid litter was borne past, Melissa asked the mosaic-worker for information. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low growl of surprise, and sniffed at the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... land he swayed, Conferred on him by Charlemagne, in trust, To him the English duke a present made Of that so sturdy and unmeasured beast, That it ten draught horse burdens had conveyed; So monstrous was the giant, and next gave The net, in which he took the unwieldy slave. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... the commonwealth: as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted, as can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people; the manner whereof, being such as is best shown by exemplification, I remit to the model. But in the present ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... by an unbolting of bars, the turning of huge, unwieldy keys, and the lieutenant of the castle stood ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... slain man Who would alive have been ourself with twice The skill, the knowledge, the vitality Actually ours. Yea, as a tree may view With fingerless boughs and lorn pole impotent, An elephant gorged upon its leaves depart, Men often have reviewed an unwieldy past, That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow, Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... deep strikes for the two boys, but its unwieldy body not answering its helm with the swiftness of an ordinary fish, it shoots fairly into the ripped-up sack, in which it gets ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... offered. Four negro slaves carrying a litter issued from the door of the White Tower. There was no mistaking that great head with its mane of coarse, white hair—the old Dom Gillian. With infinite difficulty the attendants succeeded in hoisting the unwieldy bulk upon the platform, and so into the great chair. The people looked on in silence; not a murmur of applause greeted the appearance of their lord. And with equal indifference did Dom Gillian regard his people; plainly he was wearied, for his hands rested heavily upon the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... the supremacy of Great Britain and the liberty of America is utterly impossible. So vast a continent, and of such a distance from the seat of empire, will every day grow more unmanageable. The motion of so unwieldy a body cannot be directed with any dispatch and uniformity without committing to the Parliament of Great Britain powers inconsistent with our freedom. The authority and force which would be absolutely necessary for the preservation of the peace and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... "5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the prosaic cutter. The chief element however is a thing 'to take stones out of a horse's hoof.' What a beautiful sensation of security it gives one to reflect that if one should ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... houses in the dead of night, cut down the mosquito bars and butchered families. Here was the hand of iron; here was Nakaeia redux. He came, summoned from the tributary rule of Little Makin: he was installed, he proved a puppet and a trembler, the unwieldy shuttlecock of orators; and the reader has seen the remains of him in his summer parlour under the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... belonging to the aristocratic society of St. Petersburg embraced with enthusiasm the new doctrines, and declared war against "classicism," under which term they understood all that was antiquated, dry, and pedantic. Discarding the stately, lumbering, unwieldy periods which had hitherto been in fashion, they wrote a light, elastic, vigorous style, and formed a literary society for the express purpose of ridiculing the most approved classical writers. The new principles ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... throughout the days of its republic, are still the objects of classic interest, of general homage, and of generous emulation, among all the nobler spirits of the world? We pass over the records of Oriental empire as we pass over the ruins of their capitals; we find nothing but masses of wreck, unwieldy heaps of what once, perhaps, was symmetry and beauty; fragments of vast piles, which once exhibited the lavish grandeur of the monarch, or the colossal labour of the people; but all now mouldered and melted down. The mass essentially wants the interest ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... the leading men of the State, those who have since been most distinguished in its history, such as S. T. Logan, Stuart, Browning, Dubois, Hardin, Breese, and many others. But they were utterly unable to do anything except by dividing the Jackson men, whose very numbers made their party unwieldy, and by throwing their votes with the more decent and conservative portion of them. In this way, in the late election, they had secured the success of Governor Reynolds—the Old Ranger—against Governor Kinney, who represented the vehement and proscriptive spirit ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... satisfactory manner, express the real views of the Committee. They claim to have drawn up a body of improved marginal references, to have wholly removed archaisms, to have supplied running headings, to have modified what they consider unwieldy paragraphs, to have lightened what they regard as clumsy punctuation, and by typographical arrangements, such as by leaving a line blank, to have indicated the main transitions of thought in the Epistles and Apocalypse. These and other characteristics will be found ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott

... alarming method of over-inflation and threatening collapse. It is an alarming process because those huge and heavily armed monsters of primeval days who furnish the zoological types corresponding to our modern over-armed states, themselves died out from the world when their unwieldy armament had reached its final point of expansion. Will our own modern states, one wonders, more fortunately succeed in escaping from the tough hides that ever more closely constrict them, and finally save ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the folds of a knitted shawl and over her thin cloak she wore an immense mackinaw of flaming hues whose skirts fell 'way below her knees. Over her boots, protestingly, she had drawn on an amazing pair of things made of heavy felt and ending in thick rubber feet, that were huge and unwieldy. Her hands were lost in great scarlet mitts. It is possible that at this time there was little feminine vanity left in her, yet she looked furtively to one side or the other, expecting scoffing glances. She felt sure ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... pleading for the right of Ireland to govern herself, Mr. Nathaniel Kingsnorth was endeavouring to understand how to manage so unwieldy and ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... beard which flows over his breast. His complexion is somewhat lighter than that usual among the Turks, and his general appearance does not indicate more than his actual age ... The neck is short and thick, the figure corpulent and unwieldy; his stature I had afterwards the means of ascertaining to be about five feet nine inches. The general character and expression of the countenance are unquestionably fine, and the forehead especially is a striking and majestic feature. Much of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... day, he might enter the harbor in befitting style. He accordingly stepped into the barge, and took his seat beneath the awning. The grand chamberlain seated himself on the cushion opposite. The rowers bent to their oars, and renewed their mournful old ditty, and the gorgeous, but unwieldy barge moved slowly and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... stumbled towards the ladder, marvelling to find my hands and feet so unwieldy as I climbed; the higher I went the more the rolling and pitching of the ship grew on me, so that when at last I dragged myself out on deck it was no wonder to find the weather very blusterous and with, ever and anon, clouds of white spray lashing aboard out of the hissing dark ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... on hand to adjust matters!" she thought inwardly. "But I can see that when they really begin to use their 'phones at all, as most owners of them do, this exchange business would become a rather unwieldy affair." Then Joyce sighed so profoundly that Gus heard it at the other end, even as ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... social life forbids this abrupt cleavage between the arts of production and consumption, between the man and his work. It is only in the case of the largest and densest industrial cities, swollen to an unwieldy and dangerous size, that such methods of decentralisation can in some measure be applied. In these monstrous growths machinery of decentralisation may be evoked to undo in part at any rate the work ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, instead of a single ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... "Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... specimens will not get too large for several years, it will be best to get plants from the florist. It frequently happens, however, that an old plant which has been grown up to a single stem, becomes unwieldy, and bare at the bottom. In such cases the upper part may be removed by "topping" and the main trunk cut back to within six to eighteen inches of the pot or tub, and water withheld partly until new growth starts. The old stem may thus be transformed ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... very near us, and came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe, and placed us in imminent danger. Thinking to frighten them off, we fired a shot or two at them, but the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens, about as many more of their unwieldy companions, and we were more closely beset than before. Our people, who had never in all their lives been exposed in a canoe to such huge and formidable beasts, trembled with fear and apprehension, and absolutely wept aloud; and their terror was not a little increased by the dreadful peals of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various

... mathematical theories. The most carefully studied language still leaves room for interpretation and construction. Time itself, which works such mighty changes in all things, produces a state of circumstances not in the mind of the lawgiver. The existing system, it may be, is an unwieldy, inconvenient structure, heavy and grotesque from the mixed character of its architecture outwardly, inwardly its space too much occupied and its inmates embarrassed by passages and circuities. The abstractionist ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood

... expenditure of, money were required to restore normal conditions. Thenceforth the state of the Bakufu treasury went from bad to worse. Once again Hagiwara Shigehide had recourse to adulteration of the coinage. This time he tampered mainly with the copper tokens, but owing to the unwieldy and impure character of these coins, very great difficulty was experienced in putting them into circulation, and the Bakufu financiers finally were obliged to fall back upon the reserve of gold kept in the treasury for special contingencies. There can be no doubt that Japan's foreign trade contributed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... when an extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and almost ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... of Mons Gaurus, the present Monte Sant' Angelo, with pillows bound over their heads to serve as protection against the showers of hot cinders that were falling thickly on all sides. At length the famous old writer, who was somewhat plethoric and unwieldy, sank exhausted to the ground, never to rise again, and shortly expired in an attack of heart failure, induced by the unusual excitement and fatigue he had lately been called upon to endure. At any ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... and the St. Lawrence. A couple of bonds lashed together—that was all; and a bond containeth twenty cribs, and a crib containeth a variable amount of beams, according to lumberers' arithmetical tables. Arthur recognised his acquaintance, the Scotch foreman, pacing the deck; he hailed the unwieldy craft, and shipped himself aboard for a voyage to the 'Corner,' where he had business at ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... candidly, you will find both attitudes reasonable. It is clear enough that Timon's utter negligence comes from slackness, and not from any consideration for me. As for the other sort, who keep me shut up in the obscurity of strong-boxes, intent on making me heavy and fat and unwieldy, never touching me themselves, and never letting me see the light, lest some one else should catch sight of me, I always thought of them as fools and tyrants; what harm had I done that they should let me rot in close confinement? and did not they know that in a little while they would pass ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... feeling on the American question was as follows: "This wide-spread nationality of the United States, with its enormous territorial possessions and increasing population, has fallen asunder, torn to pieces by the weight of its own discordant parts—as a congregation when its size has become unwieldy will separate, and reform itself into two wholesome wholes. It is well that this should be so, for the people are not homogeneous, as a people should be who are called to live together as one nation. They have attempted to combine free- soil sentiments with the practice of slavery, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... greatness of Germany is not to be explained by her unwieldy army, her red-tape bureaucracy, her impotent Reichstag, her effete Churches. Her army, Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weakness and not of strength. The true greatness of Germany is largely due to a factor ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... Names of such "hybrid genera" are usually "manufactured" from a combination of the names of the parent genera (e.g. x Heucherella, from Heuchera and Tiarella); in the case of hybrids between more than two genera, however, where a "combination" name would be unwieldy, it is permissible to make a new name by adding the termination ara to the name of a person connected with the plant concerned (e.g. x Sanderara for a tri-generic orchid hybrid). Before making a new "hybrid generic" name, a botanist should be consulted, as a Latin ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... matter before the Cabinet and King. Without that high authority we can do nothing. But I see no reason to doubt the issue when we, who know the wants and needs of California, approve and desire. We are doomed to failure in this unwieldy land of worthless savages, but it is the business of the wretched servants of a glorious monarch to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... rivermen were forced to carry bodily, ten men to a side, the peavies clamped in as handles. When once they were afloat, the task became easier. From the advantage of deadwood, stumps, or other logs the "sackers" pushed the unwieldy timbers forward, leaping, splashing, heaving, shoving, until at last the steady current of the main river seized the logs and bore them away. With marvellous skill they topped the dripping, bobby, rolling ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... excellent speech. I did not hear either him or Stanley. John has surpassed all expectations hitherto, as leader, which is matter of great exultation to his party, but the tide is already beginning to turn, and there are evident symptoms of weakness in the great unwieldy heterogeneous body he is at the head of. Tavistock came to me yesterday morning, and told me his brother had sent for him, 'finding himself in difficulties.' He did not particularise them, but said that naturally, in a situation of such novelty, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... him direct them in the emergency. Just as the front of the phalanx was within short rifle distance, he discharged his rifle and brought down one of the bulls, that seemed to be a file leader, by a ball between the horns. The unwieldy animal fell. The mass raised a deafening sort of bellow, and became arrested, as if transfixed to the spot. A momentary confusion of the mass behind ensued. But, borne along by the pressure of the multitudes still in the rear, there ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... molecules together so as to make a complex and massive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... taken by Philip was to obtain a Bull from Pope Paul IV for the creation of the new bishoprics, and this Bull was renewed and confirmed by Pius IV, January, 1560. Up to this time the entire area of the seventeen provinces had been divided into three unwieldy dioceses—Utrecht, Arras and Tournay. The See of Utrecht comprised nearly the whole of the modern kingdom of the Netherlands. Nor was there any archiepiscopal see. The metropolitical jurisdiction was exercised by the three foreign Archbishops of Cologne, Rheims and Treves. Philip ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... to-day who are to be released to-morrow. It appears that when young Lamar lost his horse on the plains of Manassas, the 4th Alabama Regiment had to fall back a few hundred yards, and it was impossible to bear Col. Jones, wounded, from the field, as he was large and unwieldy. When the enemy came up, some half dozen of their men volunteered to convey him to a house in the vicinity. They were permitted to do this, and to remain with him as a guard. Soon after our line advanced, and with such impetuosity as to sweep everything before it. Col. Jones was rescued, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... French. There is a mass of German fiction probably as uninteresting to a foreigner as popular English and American romance. And German compared with French is an unattractive language; unmelodious, unwieldy, and cursed with a hideous and blinding lettering that the German is too patriotic to sacrifice. There has been in Germany a more powerful parallel to what one may call the "honest Saxon" movement among the English, that queer mental twist that moves men to call an otherwise undistinguished ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... very strongly to stand rough roads, and are of several patterns; those used in the war in South Africa were reported on as heavy, uncomfortable, and so unwieldy as to be incapable very often of keeping up with the troops; but a new and more mobile vehicle, to convey four patients lying down as well as six seated, or fourteen all seated (whereas the old pattern wagons only accommodated two lying-down ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or license of a general ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... but the bad society was capital. I like, for instance, to watch the shoals of fishermen that throng our streets in the early spring, inappropriate as porpoises on land, or as Scott's pirates in peaceful Kirkwall,—unwieldy, bearded creatures in oil-skin suits,—men who have never before seen a basket-wagon or a liveried groom and, whose first comments on the daintinesses of fashion are far more racy than anything which fashion can say ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... replaced, I think, by a Mr. Falkner. He is a tall, stout, gentlemanly man, but, while a perfect gentleman in his conversation, and having less of the American accent than most Americans, his manner is somewhat ungainly—perhaps owing to his make, which is large and a little inclining to the unwieldy. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... five hundred feet, have rudders for giving a vertical or a horizontal motion, and several strengthening keels that prevent leeway when turning. They are entirely on the principle of birds, maintaining themselves mechanically, and differing thus from the unwieldy balloon. Starting as if on a circular railway, against the wind, they rise to a considerable height, and then, shutting off the batteries, coast down the aerial slope at a rate that sometimes touches five hundred miles an hour. When near the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... greater benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and education,—which we, in our assumed superiority, call crude and old-fashioned,—all their rude notions of sociology, all their ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... combination-dials, time-locks and the like. A single keyhole, almost large enough to admit a child's hand, and certainly calculated to admit the key in the newel-post, demonstrated that this safe depended for the security of its contents upon nothing more than its massive construction and unwieldy lock. It demonstrated something more: that its owner based his confidence upon its isolation and the loyalty of his employees, or else had satisfied himself through practical experiment that one safe was as good as another, ancient ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... arrived in time to prevent big corporations from being unwieldy and aristocratic. The foreman of a Pittsburg coal company may now stand in his subterranean office and talk to the president of the Steel Trust, who sits on the twenty-first floor of a New York skyscraper. The long-distance talks, especially, have grown to be indispensable ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... back in dismay as the bull drew near: and she was right; for, in his agony and amazement, the unwieldy but sinewy brute leaped the five-barred gate, and cleared it all but the top rail; that he burst through, as if it had been paper, and dragged Uxmoor after him, and pulled him down, and tore him some yards along the hard road on his back, and bumped ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... apprize the chief of Chempoalla of our approach. When about a league from that place, we were met by twenty principal inhabitants, who presented Cortes and the cavalry with bouquets of very odoriferous flowers, apologizing for the absence of the cacique, as he was too fat and unwieldy to be able to come so far in person. Continuing our march, we arrived at the town of Chempoalla, viewing with admiration the beauty of its situation and buildings, and the elegant plantations of trees in its neighbourhood. Our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... steady and persisting force, as it is in some older communities. It moves spasmodically and after long periods of quiescence and usually under some stress of excitement, which prevents deliberation and therefore effectiveness. Law being more unwieldy than conditions, naturally lags behind them, and what we have to recognize is a change in conditions and in laws and not an outbreak of lawlessness. Another evil result from the impetuous way in which we ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson

... perfected concert organizations headed by a Sousa or a Gabriel Pares. It would embrace with like inclusiveness the history of the pipe organ through its stages of evolution from the ponderous instruments with men straddling unwieldy bellows to the marvel installed in Festival Hall, and it would embrace the history of the art of organ music up to such exemplars as our own Clarence Eddy, John &. McClellan, Edwin Lemare, and Camille Saint-Saens. What a chapter would be set aside ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... began to eat again. From the corner of her eye the mother stealthily regarded his broad, pockmarked face, endeavoring to find something in it to reconcile her to the unwieldy, square figure of Vyesovshchikov. Her eyebrows fluttered whenever she encountered the shooting glance of his little eyes. Andrey held his head in his hands; he became restless—he suddenly laughed, and then abruptly stopped, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... reading world. If the Monitor's solid eleven-inch balls bounded without apparent effect from the sloping roof of the Merrimac, so, in turn, the Merrimac's broadsides passed harmlessly over the low deck of the Monitor, or rebounded from the round sides of her iron turret. When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... caused them to abandon the lands belonging to the king.—We obliged them to leave their cannon, which consisted of nine pieces, &c." He further adds: "The English, struck with panic, took to flight, and left their flag and one of their colors." We have shown that the flag left was the unwieldy one belonging to the fort; too cumbrous to be transported by troops who could not carry their own necessary baggage. The regimental colors, as honorable symbols, were scrupulously carried off by Washington, and retained by ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... active intellect, and induced her to visit the quiet parsonage library as assiduously as did Horace, Valgius, and Virgil the gardens on the Esquiline where Maecenas held his literary assize. Instead of skimming a few text-books that cram the brain with unwieldy scientific technicalities and pompous philosophic terminology, her range of thought and study gradually stretched out into a broader, grander cycle, embracing, as she grew older, the application of those great principles ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... carrying behind him. I could not refrain from asking the officer whether the trusty broad-sword had not done good service in the battle of Yungay; but he candidly acknowledged that he had not attempted to use it, as he found it much too unwieldy. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... soon as the soldier became sober, and saw himself placed under such an unwieldy animal, he was so terrified that he scarcely durst move either hand or foot; but the elephant soon caused his fears to subside by caressing him with his trunk, and thus tacitly ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... become the subject of conversation on board the Catamaran, is in many respects very different from other ocean-birds. Although generally classed with the pelicans, it bears but a very slight resemblance to any species of these misshapen, unwieldy, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... requires also another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land,—unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... having been installed in the possession of the dead man's cap, was soon appointed to fill his situation, which was that of tending the camels, when they were sent to feed upon the mountains, and, as he was fat and unwieldy, there was no apprehension of his running away. As for me, I was not permitted to leave the tents, but was, for the present, employed in shaking the leather bags which contained the curds from which ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... his words he produced his automatic pistol. The argument was conclusive. With every indication of fear the two natives pushed off, and seizing the paddles they propelled the unwieldy craft down stream. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling and cooing and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... in spite of Mrs. Crawley, and was rolling on the road to Ghent. Louis the Desired was getting ready his portmanteau in that city, too. It seemed as if Misfortune was never tired of worrying into motion that unwieldy exile. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... latter saw at once that his opponent's far greater weight and strength rendered it hopeless for him to trust to close fighting, and he worked round and round him, every now and then rushing at him and delivering a telling blow, and getting off again before his heavy and comparatively unwieldy companion ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... antagonist was an effeminate youth, who would be swept from before him at the first flourish of his tremendous weapon. But the firm and watchful attitude assumed by the young man, reminded the Swiss of the deficiency of his own unwieldy implement, and made him determine to avoid any precipitation which might give advantage to an enemy who seemed both daring and vigilant. He unsheathed his huge sword, by drawing it over the left shoulder, an operation which required some little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... combination that seems finally to have been selected as the proper form of union for the libraries and the librarians of the United States. We have a large organization which, as it has grown more and more unwieldy, has been subdivided into smaller specialized sections without losing its continuity for its broader and perhaps vaguer work. At the same time, specialized bodies with related aims have been partially or wholly absorbed, until, by processes ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... theatre boxes which the Levantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur's treatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre, especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body was minimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyed Cardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From the first manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged to him. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an unwieldy corpse, away from the track of other ships. And she would have been posted really as "overdue," or maybe as "missing," had she not been sighted in a snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling island, by a whaler going north from her Polar cruising ground. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... at night, when the Amadan was sleeping soundly, up comes a cailliach [old hag] and four badachs [unwieldy big fellows], and the cailliach carried with her a feather and a bottle of iocshlainte [ointment of health], with which she began ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... as "the Natural being Negativity, the Spiritual must be the opposite of that, and both united in God form the Absolute," etc., etc. But we shall not give ourselves further pain in laying before the English reader the like heavy and unwieldy lumber. Whoever relishes such stuff, and can digest it, need not apply to Khalid; for, in this case, he is but a poor third-hand caterer. Better go to the Manufacturers direct; they are within reach ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... to slang 'humongous'] Large, unwieldy, usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... proceeded, gave evidence that they were advancing deeper and deeper into the domains of savage nature. Boundless wastes kept extending to the eye, more and more animated by herds of buffalo. Sometimes these unwieldy animals were seen moving in long procession across the silent landscape; at other times they were scattered about, singly or in groups, on the broad, enameled prairies and green acclivities, some ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... recognised the slouching gait and unwieldy form of Henslowe. There were at this moment all kinds of gruesome stories afloat in the village about the ex-agent. It was said that he was breaking up fast; it was known that he was extensively in debt; and the village ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and was completed in about three months. There were already eighteen German Bibles, and he knew some of them, for a particular blunder is copied from an edition of 1466. All those that I have seen, and I have seen nearly all in Dr. Ginsburg's collection, are unwieldy folios. Luther's translation was published at a florin and a half, and may now be had for sixty guineas. It was reprinted eighty-five times in eleven years. The text as we know it was revised by his friends twenty years later. It was his appeal to the masses, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... the sobriquet of le Gros, or the Fat, from his excessive corpulence. His unwieldy body probably contributed to that indolence of mind which induced him to withdraw from nearly all participation in political life. Louis XV. was one of the vilest of men, and by a portion of his subjects ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... closed round her, but she lowered her boats, and these, in spite of the fire of the enemy, brought her head round before the wind, and she made her way through her antagonists and got clear. For several hours the battle continued. The Spanish fire was so slow, and their ships so unwieldy, that it was rarely they succeeded in firing a shot into their active foes, while the English shot tore their way through the massive timbers of the Spanish vessels, scattering the splinters thickly among the soldiers, who had been sent ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... object now lost, which was probably a mirror. The left arm is raised, and with the left hand she presses a lotus lily to her breast. The body is easy and well formed, the figure indicates youth, the face is open, smiling, pleasant, and somewhat plebeian. To modify the unwieldy mass of the headdress was beyond the skill of the artist, but the bust is delicately and elegantly modelled, the clinging garment gives discreet emphasis to the shape, and the action of the hand which ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... summer-time it was visited by bisons with their calves, and in Winter by reindeer. This theory is open to a great many objections. As is well known, some animals make quite extensive migrations annually, but we can scarcely believe that heavy, unwieldy animals like the hippopotamus, were then such industrious travelers as to wander every year from Italy to Northern England and return. But the very ground on which this theory rests, that of strongly contrasted summers and winters, could not be true of Europe or the western portions ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... be interrupted in a decidedly unpleasant manner. All at once he became conscious of a huge object, scarcely thirty yards distant, whose attention he had already attracted. Mr. Onthank had been long enough in California to recognize in the huge, unwieldy figure—a grizzly bear! ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... concluded our breakfasts, when a loud and clattering sound was heard; and down came, in a heavy trot, with sundry ear-piercing crackings of the whip, the thundering Diligence: large, lofty, and of most unwieldy dimensions: of a structure, too, strong enough to carry a half score of elephants. The postilion is an animal perfectly sui generis: gay, alert, and living upon the best possible terms with himself. He wears the royal ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... caterpillar exceeded that of the shaft. It seemed to reflect for a few moments, and then with feverish haste enlarged the shaft. Another difficulty had then to be overcome. Was it possible to force such a bulky and unwieldy body head first down—the habitual way? The insect came to a rapid decision in the negative. Backing into the shaft, it seized the caterpillar by the head and drew it down, presently emerging, and how it managed to squeeze past so tight a plug ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... letter, in which he says of her heroine Glorvina, "I believe you stole a spark from heaven to give animation to your idol." He thought the inferiority of Ida was owing to its author's luxurious surroundings. "I cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as well as any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hunger, and I really believe that Addison would have had more point if he had had less victuals; and if you do not restrict yourself to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... water-carrier pass with her copper buckets dripping at the end of the yoke balanced on her shoulder, and he returned her smiles and excuses with others as broad and gay; he brushed by the swelling hoops of ladies, and stooped before the unwieldy burdens of porters, who as they staggered through the crowd with a thrust hero, and a shove there forgave themselves, laughing, with "We are in Venice, signori;" and he stood aside for the files of soldiers clanking heavily over the pavement, then muskets kindling to a blaze ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... seeking peaceful quarters protected from the waves. We had hopes, too, of finding penguins. Our expectation as far as the sea-elephants were concerned was not at fault. We heard the roar of the bulls as we neared the head of the bay, and soon afterwards saw the great unwieldy forms of the beasts lying on a shelving beach towards the bay-head. We rounded a high, glacier-worn bluff on the north side, and at 12.30 p.m. we ran the boat ashore on a low beach of sand and pebbles, with tussock growing above ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... convention being once known and assented to, it does not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the word "lapis," or by "lithos," "pietra," "pierre," "stein," "stane" or "stone"; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are of unwieldy length will do as well as another, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not the symbols. The whole power of spoken language is vested in the invariableness ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... composed of representatives from the local alumni bodies, has been for various reasons far from an effective body, though it contains the germ of a force which may become active whenever a proper occasion may arise. More competent, because less unwieldy, is the Executive Committee composed of five members of the Council and two chosen at large. This body, though it has only met semi-occasionally, has initiated several movements which have had a real influence on the relations between ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... fortunate as to meet with his prize; and by this short expedition, in which the public bore so small a share, the adventurers were encouraged to attempt further enterprises, the English seamen learned to despise the great unwieldy ships of the enemy, the naval preparations of Spain were destroyed, the intended expedition against England was retarded a twelvemonth, and the queen thereby had leisure to take more secure measures against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... news that the French had been seen four weeks before from the coast of Candia, and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost certain clew to the destination of an unwieldy body which could never regain ground lost to leeward; so, although Nelson now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for them. It may be mentioned that these ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... on. Sometimes there would be a raid, the driver would be killed, and the stage would not depart again for some days, the company being unable to find a man to take the reins. The stages were large and unwieldy, but strongly built. They had to be big enough to hold off raiders should they attack. Every stage usually carried, besides the driver, two company men who went heavily armed and belted around with numerous cartridges. One sat beside the ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... light, went a veritable army of venomous creatures! I counted no fewer than three of the giant red centipedes whose poisonous touch, called "the zayat kiss," is certain death; several species of scorpion were represented; and some kind of bloated, unwieldy spider, so gross of body that its short, hairy legs could scarce support it, crawled, hideous, almost at ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... perplexed his admirers whether he was greater as a singer or as an actor. We are told that he "was gifted with personal beauty to a rare degree. A grander head was never more grandly set on human shoulders; and in his case time and the extraordinary and unwieldy corpulence which came with time seemed only to improve the Jupiter features, and to enhance their expression of majesty, or sweetness, or sorrow, or humor as the scene demanded." His very tall figure prevented ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... roadside is merely loose sand, which gives no hold for a wheel. For a country so damp and low-lying as Belgium, there is probably nothing to equal a paved road, but it is a pity that the paving was not made a little wider. Every now and then we met one of the huge, unwieldy carts which seem to be relics of a prehistoric age—rough plank affairs of enormous strength and a design so primitive as to be a constant source of wonder. They could only be pulled along at a slow walk and with vast effort by a couple of huge horses, and the load the cart ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... was my time; I rushed—but no— Fate ever mocks an ardent man; Even as I rushed, unwieldy, slow, Bore down a ponderous Pickford-Van, And under two broad wheels crushed flat My ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... to meet us. Even in that stupefying moment I was aware that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanonical angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my sketching umbrella; I tore it from the retaining embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its unwieldy tent with a speed that I have never since achieved. Robert, on the far side of the car, was reasonably safe. The inestimable Croppy quickened up. Cowering beneath the umbrella, I awaited the crucial moment at which to shift its protection from the side to the back. The sound ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... by their gods, and thundering invitations to the intended victim to "come forth" and have his flesh given to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. Currer Bell, without pretending to be a David, feels no awe of the unwieldy Anakim; but—comprehend me rightly, gentlemen—it would grieve him to involve others in blame: any censure that would really injure and annoy his publishers would wound himself. Therefore believe that he will not act rashly—trust ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... for. He knew that some of these specks even represented Christopher as capable of harbouring designs in 'that head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other motes there were which showed him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings against other men, on the discovery that to get through life with ease and credit, he had but to hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head well polished, and leave his hair alone, had had just cunning enough to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... maintaining for eleven years longer the independence of his nation. In the year 532, however, the Frankish kings again entered the valley of the Rhone with their desolating hosts, and in 534 they completed its conquest and added it to the great unwieldy monarchy over which they ruled in ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... walked quickly into the shop odorous with burned sugar. The doll was removed from the window—it had come from Paris, he learned—and, after a single covert glance, he bought it, for, he needlessly informed the girl wrapping it in an unwieldy light ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... capital and innumerable mines and plants everywhere in the United States, can't they beat the other fellows in the market? Partly because they are carrying too much. Partly because they are unwieldy. Their organization is imperfect. They bought up inefficient plants along with efficient, and they have got to carry what they have paid for, even if they have to shut some of the plants up in order to make any interest on their investments; or, rather, not interest on their investments, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... veiled, but the Christian mothers invariably came; that is, the Albanian Christians from the outlying villages. Very quaint are these women in a most picturesque costume and carrying their infants in a cumbersome and unwieldy cradle slung on their backs. It was a very varied assortment of babies which was presented to the doctor, many of the Turkish children being so emaciated and such a mass of repulsive sores, that many were sent away as too weak. Most of them shrieked with fear, but a few came up ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... his way, centralization would have gone much further, for he would have abolished the provincial governments entirely and set up a single parliament for the whole country. Fortunately Cartier and Brown prevented that unwieldy experiment from being tried. ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... us, and made residence at Cambridge a totally different thing from what it had been in my first year. Your brother's wide culture, his singular force of character, his powerful but, at that time, rather unwieldy intellect, his Johnsonian brusqueness of speech and manner, mingled with a corresponding Johnsonian warmth of sympathy with and loyalty to friends in trouble or anxiety, his sturdiness in the assertion of his opinions, and the maintenance ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... almost nine o'clock when Grace and Arline descended the steps of Wayne Hall with mystery written on their faces. Each girl carried an unwieldy bundle. In the center of Grace's bundle, securely wrapped in fold after fold of tissue paper, was a little box. It contained one hundred and fifteen dollars in bills. Wrapped about the bills was the following ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... the unwieldy and formidable looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. Portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned, from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase, to one so small it will easily slip into ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They are, on the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until advancing age teaches them agility. This is not lack of sensitiveness, but mere length of process. For instance, a child nearly newly born is cruelly startled ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... he hunted the Quorn, under Squire Osbaldeston, six-and-thirty years ago. Sebright looks the huntsman, and the huntsman of an hereditary pack, to perfection; rather under than over the middle height; stout without being unwieldy; with a fine, full, intelligent, and fresh-complexioned oval countenance; keen gray eyes; and the decided nose of a Cromwellian Ironside. A fringe of white hair below his cap, and a broad bald forehead, when he lifts his cap to ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... adjusted ourselves to electricity or some still more subtile and commodious force, we may be able to restore somewhat of the graces of form and motion. And we shall then look back upon the hideous and awkward craft of this day very much as we now gaze upon a reproduction of the misshapen and unwieldy monsters of the palaeozoic ages. The river swarms with ferry-boats. Was ever utility attained at so great a sacrifice of taste? Their model must have been a toad with a stick thrust through it (three of which, so impaled and hung up in the sun to dry, Luther recommended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... the Hills went out over the open country, sometimes for days at a time, armed with long high-power telescopes. With these fearsome and unwieldy instruments they surveyed the country inch by inch from the advantage of a kopje. When thus they discovered a nest, they descended and appropriated the eggs. The latter, hatched at home in an incubator, formed the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... it might appear to the lay mind that a germ would scarcely care to pick a bone when it had fat meat to feed on, but my own recollections bore out my friend's statements. I remembered a man of my acquaintance, an enormously fleshy and unwieldy man, who, fearing apoplexy, undertook a radical scheme of banting. He lost fifty pounds in three months, so apoplexy did not get him, but pneumonia did with great suddenness. He was sick only three days. Nobody suspected that he was seriously ill until ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... roll along, keeping up with the swift motion of the boat in such a leisurely way. The porpoise is a deceiver. As he rolls up to the surface of the water, in his lumbering way, he looks as if he were a huge lump of unwieldy awkwardness, floating at random and almost helpless; but when you come to know him better, you find that he is a marvel of muscular power and swiftness. I have seen a "school" of porpoises in the Pacific swimming for hours alongside one of our fleetest ocean-steamers, darting a few yards ahead now ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... means of transit. In the first place, though it supported the men on it, it did not bear them high and dry above the water, which came over the ankles of most of them. Then there was no possible means of steering the unwieldy bark; and there could be no doubt that if the Argonauts did succeed in getting their vessels out into the river, it would immediately descend the stream, and that it, and those upon it, would either be upset altogether, or taken to whichever bank and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... did not see eye to eye with Torquemada on matters such as these. Don Francesco disliked all measures of violence, Camorra or freemasonry, Vatican or Quirinal—disliked them so much that he would have hated them had he been built, like the PARROCO, on hating lines. He was too unwieldy, too fond of life, too indulgent towards himself and others to experience at mention of Don Giustino's name anything but a certain feeling of discomfort—a feeling which his acute intelligence, embedded under those rolls of fat, enabled him to formulate ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... first thing, but the average ironmonger will show you an unwieldy weapon only meant to be used by navvies. Don't buy it. Get a small spade, about half-size—it is nice and light and doesn't tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm, and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife. After digging ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... walking distance, and Ruth and David had gone about half the way when they met Father Orin and Toby. These co-workers were not moving with their usual speed on account of an unwieldy burden. Tied on behind the priest's saddle was a great bag, containing the weekly mail for the neighborhood. He went to the postoffice oftener than any one else, and it had become his custom to fetch the mail to the chapel once a week, and distribute it after service on Sundays. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... and opium, the full freight and gains of a year's voyaging and trading. Half an hour or an hour hence she will be free, and the junk dropping down to sea with the drugs in her. All at once a shriek or yell of "Hard aport!" and a great iron outward-bound steamer from Hong-Kong bursts into the unwieldy Chinaman, goes crunching through her like ripping pasteboard; tears her open; snarls through steamy nostrils and cindery fiery mouth, and growls over her wreck. And the sodden, stupefied merchantman, as if drunk with opium, goes yelling and staggering with her sleepy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... or the horse, but two of its feet together, or simultaneously. We saw the footprints of young as well as old ones. This plateau is the real home of the giraffe. No place could be better adapted for such an unwieldy creature. There is abundance of small tholukh, on which it feeds; all the country is open around to it, and it is out of the reach of ferocious animals. Towards the evening the marks of the giraffe disappeared, and were succeeded by the footprints of what is here called the wild ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... the lower parts of his body and ate them away into a mass of living corruption." Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," also says that "his (Galerius's) death was caused by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died of the disease. Antiochus, surnamed the "Madman," was also afflicted with it; and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... become necessary to work on a much bigger scale, and to bring in the aid of machinery. In some places the ordinary form of steam plough has presented many practical disadvantages. They are heavy and unwieldy, and apt to sink in soft ground, from which they are extricated with difficulty. This is likely to cause damage, or more serious accidents, through explosion. Further, they require a constant train of water-carts and fuel wagons, and a ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... sure I had now got a most patient sitter, for they will lie for weeks together without stirring; but I had to keep throwing small pebbles at him, in order to make him open his eyes, and prevent his going to sleep. The flies appear to torment these unwieldy monsters most cruelly, their eyes and nostrils being stuffed full of them. I got a good sketch of the group. They appeared to stare at me occasionally with some little astonishment, stretching up their immense heads and looking around; but finding ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... never knew a baby yet that did not go and have the croup, or the colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was imperatively necessary that it should not have them. But there is no help for it. I shudder and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at the heavy, bulky, unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think carpets are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in the whole world. It is impossible to be clean with them under your feet. You may sweep your carpet twenty times and raise a dust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... under the influence of the worst affections of the mind. Passionate we can allow a jolly mortal to be; but it seems unnatural to his goodly case to be sulky and brutal. Now this man's features, surly and tallow-coloured; his limbs, swelled and disproportioned; his huge paunch and unwieldy carcass, suggested the idea, that, having once found his way into this central recess, he had there fattened, like the weasel in the fable, and fed largely and foully, until he had become incapable of retreating through any of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... this problem of enlarging his region and adjusting his burdens. His burdens are many, too numerous for him to carry, but he knows that by adopting a system he can lighten the weight of his load. Whenever they feel too complicated and unwieldy, he knows it is because he has not been able to hit upon the system which would have set everything in place and distributed the weight evenly. This search for system is really a search for unity, for synthesis; ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... tongue brought the iron horse to a pause while it was gathered, "root and branch," for her delectation. Finding the gorgeous spike of golden blossoms without a common name, she called it—most happily—the golden prince's feather. It is to be presumed that it has an unwieldy scientific cognomen in the botanies; but I heard of no common one, except that given ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... was bitter hard; the knots of the lashings were frozen tight and coated with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine chests, the canvas bundle of sails, boat-covers, and tents unwieldy and of enormous weight; the footing on the slippery, uneven ice precarious, and more than once a man, staggering under his load, broke through the crust into water so cold that the sensation ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... of the Scotch bard Robert Burns, the poet-novelist Walter Scott, and a medallion head of the artistic prose writer and critic John Ruskin, have been placed here. Music is not unrepresented, for above us is the unwieldy figure of Handel, and beneath his feet a memorial to the Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, whose perfect rendering of the master's airs will ever remain in the memory of those who were privileged to hear her. Further on is the historical ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... also of the type: homespun and buckskin, hair long and face unshaven. He straightened from a passage which was not low, then turning pushed the unwieldy door shut. It closed reluctantly, with a loud shrilling of its frost-bound hinges and frame. In a moment he dropped his hands and impatiently kicked the stubborn offender home, the suction drawing a puff of smoke ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... and that old and experienced captains, however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that they'll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect that there's something wrong in her build. She is either too unwieldy, like the Great Eastern, or she is too long to turn well, or she requires such incessant repair; or, most fatal of all, she is entered for a trade where nobody wants her; and therefore you resolve that, come what ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... too old, or otherwise as too infirm for warlike labours, leaving precisely one quarter of the nation—every fourth head—as available for war. This process for David's case would have yielded perhaps about 1,100,000 fighting men throughout Palestine. But this unwieldy pospolite was far from meeting David's secret anxieties. He had remarked the fickle and insurrectionary state of the people. Even against himself how easy had it been found to organize a sudden rebellion, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... class. They are represented by men who disguise their bodies in dense masses of sago leaves and their faces in grotesque masks with long hooked noses. In this costume the maskers jig it as well as the heavy unwieldy disguise allows them to do. But the dance consists in little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional hop; the orchestra stands in the middle, singing and thumping drums. Sometimes two or three of the masked men will make a round of the village, pelting the men with ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... triumphal car. They harnessed themselves to it at the east-end of the town, and drew it with the pomp of a swarming multitude all the length of the long street to its western mouth and half the way back again. On went that unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and the flow ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... in that vicinity about three weeks when one day he met the woman. He knew her at once, although she was greatly changed. She had grown stout, although, poor soul! it seemed as if there had been no reason for it. She was not unwieldy, but she was stout, and all the contours of earlier life had disappeared beneath layers of flesh. Her hair was not gray, but the bright brown had faded, and she wore it tightly strained back from her seamed forehead, although it was thin. One had only to look at her hair to realize that ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... The trail was narrow, exceedingly steep, and in some places fronted on precipices. Gale's burden was not very heavy, but its bulk made it unwieldy, and it was always overbalancing him or knocking against the wall side of the trail. Gale found it necessary to wait for Yaqui to take the lead. The Indian's eyes must have seen as well at night as by day. Gale toiled upward, shouldering, swinging, dragging the big pack; and, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... the victorious gladiator stood near their prone bodies triumphant, amid the deafening cheers of the crowd. Wreaths of flowers were tossed to him from the people, who stood up in their seats all round the great circle to hail him with their acclamations, and the Emperor, lifting his unwieldy body from under his canopy of gold, stretched out his hand as a sign that the prize which the dauntless combatant had fought to win was his. He at once obeyed the signal;—but now the woman, hitherto so passive and immovable, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... not get at the water! Scarcely a well was less than a hundred feet deep and most of them were anything over that up to a hundred and eighty; of course there were no pumps. The old shadouf of the desert, unwieldy though it was, would have been a veritable ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... be suited to larger creatures, because their muscular powers would have to be so enormously great that their bodies would require to be larger and heavier in proportion. They would thus be very unwieldy." ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks



Words linked to "Unwieldy" :   gawky, wieldy, ungainly, cumbersome, unmanageable, clunky, impractical, unwieldiness, clumsy, awkward, bunglesome



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