"Dumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it, and a few small shops along one side. Opposite the shops was the inn, the doctor's house, the market-house, and a public reading-room; and a bylane led from the green up towards the church—an old, low-walled, steep-roofed building, with a square, dumpy tower, in which hung a peal of bells, and where was placed a large, round, clumsy window. A clump of hardwood trees enclosed the upper end of the church-yard, and extended to the back of the rector's garden, quite ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... time came the Carmo Church, still unrepaired since 1755; Blackhorse Square, still bare of trees; the Government offices, still propped to prevent a tumble-down, and the old Custom House, still a bilious yellow; the vast barrack-like pile of S. Vicente, the historic Se or cathedral with dumpy towers; the black Castle of Sao Jorge, so hardly wrung from the gallant Moors, and the huge Santa Engracia, apparently ever to ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... going a little way along, he seated himself upon a dumpy stone post, to wait patiently till such time as the Palace ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... of those dumpy hassock sort of things. John looked down at me vindictively for a moment and then a horrid smile started spreading about his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... voice, that was admirably adapted to his appearance. Our captain fairly started; turned full toward the speaker; regarded him intently for a moment; and gulped the words he was about to utter, like one confounded. As he gazed, however, at little dumpy, examining his bow-legs, red broad cheeks, and coarse snub nose, he seemed to regain his self-command, as if satisfied the dead had not really returned ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Kurt Fawzi, the center of a group to whom he was declaiming earnestly; there was his mother, and Flora, and Flora's fiance, who was the uncomfortable lone man in an excited feminine flock. And there was Senta herself, short and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red and purple dresses, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Flinging, kicking out in dancing; capering. Flingin-tree, a piece of timber hung by way of partition between two horses in a stable; a flail. Fliskit, fretted, capered. Flit, to shift. Flittering, fluttering. Flyte, scold. Fock, focks, folk. Fodgel, dumpy. Foor, fared (i. e., went). Foorsday, Thursday. Forbears, forebears, forefathers. Forby, forbye, besides. Forfairn, worn out; forlorn. Forfoughten, exhausted. Forgather, to meet with. Forgie, to forgive. Forjesket, jaded. Forrit, forward. Fother, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... tall in the Scandinavian mountain-scene, grey of shadow and glancing with sun-gleams that rent the thick veils of mist-cloud, assumed a manner of Ossianic grandeur. After three hours and a half we were abreast of Zib, around whose dumpy tower all the population had congregated. Thence the regular coralline bank, whose beach is the Bab, runs some distance down coast, allowing passage to our ugly old friend, Wady Salm. The next important mouth is the Wady ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... Sylvia took up fencing primarily because it promised to give her one more occupation, left her less time for loneliness. As it turned out, however, these lessons proved far more to her than a temporary anodyne: they brought her a positive pleasure. She delighted the dumpy little captain with her aptness, and he took the greatest pains in his instruction. Before the end of her Freshman year she twice succeeded in getting through his guard and landing a thrust on his well-rounded figure; and though to keep down her conceit he told her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... squeak fell on my ear. 'Ho, ho,' said I, 'there you go, my boys;' and I hurried up the glen. I soon started them, and singling out a fat pig, ran tilt at him. In a few seconds I was up with him, and stuck my spear right through his dumpy body. Just as I did so, I saw that we were on the edge of a precipice, whether high or low I knew not, but I had been running at such a pace that I could not stop, so the pig and I gave a howl in concert and went plunging over together. I remembered nothing more after that, till I came ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... was ready Mrs. Ede, remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. And the moment she was gone Kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. Like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. She lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... La Forge, with the thin blue smoke of gorse fires floating down from every dumpy chimney and adding a flavour to the sweetest air in the world,—with a morning greeting from everyone they met—over the heights and down the zigzag path to the sloping ledges, and in they went, all three, into the clearest and crispest ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... lovely. He had learned, indeed, that in the game which, for the chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a saintlike seemliness. The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore, and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in its whole effect ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Present" at roll-call to the prettier name of Florence; but uncle Tim—he's such a jolly fellow!—said, when he first held her in her delicately-embroidered blankets, that she was such a bouncer, so red and so dumpy, that she would never be anything but a bunch; and so dubbed, she carries the name to this day. But did not she disappoint him, though! for, in some unaccountable way, she daily stretched long, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... model Mozart performances. Here, I cried, here will I revel in a lovely atmosphere of art. My German was rather rusty since my Weimar days, but I took my accent, with my courage, in both hands and asked a coachman to drive me to the opera-house. Through green and luscious lanes of foliage this dumpy, red-faced scoundrel drove; by the beautiful Isar, across the magnificent Maximilian bridge over against the classic facade of the Maximilineum. Twisting tortuously about this superb edifice, we tore along another leafy road lined on one side by villas, on the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... wonder when she 'll go,' whispered Hollyhock. 'Look at Dumpy Dad; he's perfectly miserable. If she does not clear out soon, I 'll turn her out, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... sighted the Kidi hills, and, in a sea of swampy grass, at last we stood in front of and overlooked the great king's palace, situated N. lat. 1 deg. 37' 43", and E. long. 32 deg. 19' 49", on a low tongue of land between the Kafu and Nile rivers. It was a dumpy, large hut, surrounded by a host of smaller ones, and the worst royal residence we had seen since leaving Uzinza. Here Kajunju, coming from behind, overtook us, and breathless with running, in the most excited manner, abused Dr K'yengo's men ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... bordered with stones placed one on top of the other, without cement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape through all ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... positively ugly or grotesquely out of taste. The costumes were as good as the customs, and I have already celebrated the manners of this crowd. I believe I must except the costumes of the bicyclesses, who were unfailingly dumpy in effect when dismounted, and who were all the more lamentable for tottering about, in their short skirts, upon the tips of their narrow little, sharp-pointed, silly high-heeled shoes. How severe I am! But those high heels seemed to take all honesty from their daring in the wholesome exercise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the white sapphire on its velvet bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her brain. EVIE VAN OSBURGH? The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had "placed" one by one in enviable niches of existence! Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love—a mother who knows how ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... cold, and she had a mean smile and a dishonest voice that often irritated me. She was ruddy-faced and bursting with health, taller than Mrs. Dienstog, yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy. What I particularly hated in her was her laughter, which sounded for all the world like the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... thin-bladed saw, and he rapidly cut out the old hard bough, close down to the place where it branched from the dumpy trunk, and then, handing me the tool, he knelt down on a pad of carpet he carried in his ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... is a widow, too, and has quite an interesting story. She is a dumpy little woman whose small nose seems to be smelling the stars, it is so tip-tilted. She has the merriest blue eyes and the quickest wit. It is really worth a severe bumping just to be welcomed by her. It was so warm and cozy in her ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... not the least like her niece. She was short and rather dumpy. She had a sensible, downright sort of face, and she took life with a gravity which would have oppressed a less ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,—Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,—behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the publisher, are the last brochures of Mr. Jeremy ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pipe?' and she hands him a long-handled affair with a weichsel-wood bowl and a cherry stem that has a kind of rakish, good-natured curve to it. Then he sits down and grinds out copy that will make an Englishman laugh at first sight. A big, dumpy brier, with a shorter stem and a celluloid end, is responsible for general descriptive work, sporting news, etc., while a trim little meerschaum with a carved bowl engenders excellent criticisms of music and drama. ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... contrast to Mrs. Lewis. Mrs. Steward was a tall, thin, rather refined-looking woman. Mrs. Lewis was fat and dumpy, decidedly untidy in appearance, with a melancholy air and a habit of constantly indulging in low weeping. Mrs. Steward looked as if she had never wept in her life; she sat upright as a dart, her movements were quick, her manners independent; she ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... the name suggested to me a tall, gaunt female with sharp features; and I was taken by surprise when a short, dumpy woman, with a round face, came wobbling in and asked ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... come to an end, for the good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury-street; so he took the back seat of the carriage, after a feeble bow or two, and speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-colored hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... May 13 and 27). Violent treatment of the moderates in the Bon-Conseil and Arsenal sections; "struck with chairs, several persons wounded, one captain carried off on a bench; the gutter-jumpers and dumpy shopkeepers cleared out, leaving the sans-culottes masters of the field."—Meillan, 111.—Buchez et Roux, XXVII. 237, session of the Jacobin club, May 26. "In the section of Butte-des-Moulins the patriots, finding they were ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of Death. Onward—still onward stalked the grim Legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific war-whoop of the Indian: and onward, still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music, by bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than did the old Jesuit College. The girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds. Angelique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was the dumpy little figure of her ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the little bears, Fatty (who was the one who had been sucking his paws) and Dumpy, were delighted to have a new playmate, and they told him he might come over and slide down their hill, but the third one, Sprawley, scowled and grumbled. "Another one to be eating up our meat," he said. "Just as if there weren't enough ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... with the big-bugs of the town, over in the administration building. But when he rode into town on his horse he looked mighty dignified, though he fell some in my estimation when I saw him standing up. He looked rather dumpy then. He carried himself with a lot of dignity, a little more than was becoming, I thought, and he received the cheers of the people as a matter of course, and hardly took the trouble to acknowledge them, even by a bow. The officers of the town treated him with great deference, and I guess ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... love for Ormersfield, and she was charmed by her visits to old haunts, well remembering everything. She gladly recognised the little low-browed church, the dumpy tower, and grave-yard rising so high that it seemed to intend to bury the church itself, and permitted many a view, through the lattices, of the seats, and the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the weather, severe as it is here. The pulque is taken to market in pig-skins, which, though the pig himself is taken out of them, still retain his shape very accurately; and when nearly full of liquor, they roll about on their backs, and kick up the little dumpy legs that are left them, in the most comical and life-like way. When we went away we bought the old man's acocote, and carried it home in triumph, and is it not in the Museum at Kew Gardens to this day? (See the illustration ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... listened kindly to it, poured in the balm of sympathy and love, and then, if possible, restored her to her husband. Of all this she thought during the few minutes Mrs. Dr. Van Buren talked, and she sat passive in her chair, where she had dropped, with her dumpy little hands lying so helplessly in her lap, and her cap all awry, as Tabby had made it when purring ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... had fresh rosy cheeks and small brown eyes, hair to match the eyes, a nose undeniably pug, a full, wide mouth, and strong, white teeth,—fortunately, since every one showed when she laughed, and she laughed a great deal. Then she had a dumpy figure, and good large hands and feet, a look of downright honesty and good-temper, and a nice, clear voice in speech or singing, though she only sang hymns. But for all this, every-body in Deerfield liked 'Tenty Scran'; old and young, men and maidens, all had a kindly welcome for her; and though ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... boys had reached the "beautiful room with three beds in it." A dumpy little maiden with long earrings met them at the doorway, dropped them a curtsy, and passed out. She carried a long-handled thing that resembled a ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... her face in her hands, and her dumpy shoulders are heavin' up and down passionate. At first I couldn't make out whether it's woe, or if she's swallowed a safety pin. Anyway, it's deep emotion ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... had tried, vigorously but ineffectually, to mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but then he was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and might, by courage and energy, become the master of that delightful, downy, dumpy, yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green grass in front of him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it, but only to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping through his fingers as he fell upon his face. "Quawk!" said the yellow thing, and wobbled off sideways. ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Absalom, close to this other which we have just described. It consists of a solid square erection, bearing what, for want of a better name, I must call a spire, with curved sides, the sides curving inwards as they fall from the apex to the base. This spiral roof, too low and dumpy to be properly called a spire, is very strong, built with stones laid in circles flat on each other, the circles becoming smaller as they rise towards the top. Why Absalom should have had such a tomb, who can say? ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... am perjured, for I've wed a dumpy lass I much despised in days of yore, Of quite the plainest class, Because each maiden of my dream, Whose favor I did seek, Was so opposed unto my scheme I married ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... arms on the chimney-pot while I scanned the roofs around for a glimpse between them, down to the street and Mr. Trapp. I did so at ease, for a flue entered the main shaft immediately below the stack, which was a decidedly dumpy one—in fact, less than five feet tall; so that I supported myself not by the arms alone but by resting my toes on the ridge where ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Wright was a rather short, dumpy woman and inclined to be stout and short of breath. She had iron-gray hair, near-sighted dark eyes and very pretty, very plump small hands. She exclaimed over her room when she saw it, said that ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... moment Zeb appeared. He was a short, dumpy, thick-set negro, with a most luxuriant head of wool, a portion of which hung around his head in small, close braids, resembling bits of decayed rope. His eyes were large and protruding, and his face glistened like a mirror. He was a genuine African. Some of their qualities in him were carried to ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy, tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long, resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to enlace and press ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... "Martha's been hunting everywhere for you. Miss North wants you in her office right away. There's a man with her—a dumpy—I beg your pardon—but a short, stout man with a bald head. I think it's your uncle, or cousin. Anyway, hurry! There's something doing. Miss North looks like a war cloud without a ghost of a silver lining. She was ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... farm-house, she sat down for a moment opposite the stone on which the cowbird was perched. And after examining a sand cut that was giving her some trouble under her little toe, she suddenly caught sight of the dumpy black ball that was moving back and forth with every gust. She leaned forward on her knees to see what it was, and crept slowly toward him until she was within reach. Then, before he had time to take his head from under his wing, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... off the cigar-stumps and other little et ceteras which were clinging to him like cerements, uttering the while unintelligible oaths. Then he struck for his domus et placens uxor at as rapid a rate as his little dumpy ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... same innocent and childlike way, also took his leave. But this bird appeared to feel insulted, and in a few minutes stole back, and took revenge in a most peculiar way; he hovered under the twig on which the three were sitting, their dumpy tails hanging down in a row, and actually twitched the feathers of those tails! Even that did not frighten the little ones; they leaned far over and stared at their assailant, but nothing more. I looked carefully to see if the vireo had a nest ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller |
