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Villainous   /vˈɪlənəs/   Listen
Villainous

adjective
1.
Extremely wicked.  Synonym: nefarious.  "A villainous plot" , "A villainous band of thieves"



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"Villainous" Quotes from Famous Books



... feared," replied Estein. "One that you might do that; the other, that a troop of as villainous-looking knaves as you now are yourself might hive out of the wood behind you. But how did you escape last night, ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... thing!" returned Nan stoutly. "It's that villainous cigarette. But never mind now. There! Don't think of anything but getting better. I'll stroke your head for you. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... and whose proprietor is promised a commissionership by the governor who is backing the ring, will notify its readers that the selfish office-seekers, who had contested in the primaries, have received a stinging rebuke at the hands of the voters, and their villainous attempts to destroy the party, which had so unselfishly devoted itself to the interests of the community, have fallen to ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... it is recorded that he estimated that one constable and six men would suffice for Cork, but for Ventry, 'a large harbour near Dingle,' one constable and fifty men were necessary; so he evidently had a clear apprehension of the villainous capabilities ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... into the shaft; her father and the chief engineer sent the two bomb-robots up onto the gallery. The right-hand robot sped at the airboat; the last thing Conn saw in its screen was a face, bearded and villainous and contorted with fright, looking out the pilot's window of the airboat. Then it went dead, and there was a roar from above. On the other side, several men were firing straight at the pickup of the other robot; it went dead, too, and there ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say—if ever you know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of all whom she may meet, pray for ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... finishing touch (having especial reference to the subject in hand), "An able assistant wanted: annual salary, L5! A master of arts would be preferred!" Immediately after this, in the Reading, came the description of Mr. Squeers, several of the particulars in regard to whose villainous appearance always told wonderfully: as, where it was said "he had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two;" or, again, where in reference to his attire—it having been mentioned that his coat-sleeves were a great deal too-long and his trousers ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... and the May-floure roade neerer them then the other two by a base shotte, so they made a sure account either to haue taken her or burnt her. In the meane time our men that had the watch (litle thinking of such villainous treacheries after so many faire wordes) were singing and playing one with the other and made such a noyse, that (being but a small gale of winde, and riding neere the lande) they might heare vs from the shoare: so that we supposed that they made account that we had espyed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... for the land to rise against him, till he had amended the misdeed. And to all this the King accorded, and said to my Cid that he should go back into Castille with him: but my Cid said he would not go into Castille till he had won that castle of Rueda, and delivered the villainous Moors thereof into his hands, that he might do justice upon them. So the King thanked him greatly, and returned into Castille, and my Cid remained before the Castle of Rueda. And he lay before it so long, and beset ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... Merchant Bank of Stirling, which never was in high credit, having been known almost at the time of its commencement by the odious nickname of Black in the West. Another was within these ten years, the East Lothian Banking Company, whose affairs had been very ill conducted by a villainous manager. In both cases, the notes were paid up in full. In the latter case, they were taken up by one of the most respectable houses in Edinburgh; so that all current engagements were paid without ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... claims were not well founded; and common-sense ought to have told them that, if the former claims were not just, the latter, depending on the same title, were rendered still less so by aggravated violence. Every show of justice in a villainous action rises up in sterner judgment against the perpetrator, inasmuch as it evinces design, and makes him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... counted worthy of so great labor in their behalf. For they themselves are given much to lying, theft, and drunkenness, vain babbling, and profane dancing and singing; and are still, as S. Gildas reports of them, 'more careful to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair, than decently to cover their bodies; while their land (by reason of the tyranny of their chieftains, and the continual wars and plunderings among their tribes, which leave them weak and divided, an easy prey to the myrmidons of the excommunicate ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... some such words as these, that at times could scarcely be heard because of the sobbing of the people, and of my wives who wept loudly, except Otomie alone, this villainous priest made a sign and once more the music sounded. Then he and his band placed themselves about me, my wives the goddesses going before and after, and led me down the hall and on to the gateways of the palace, which were thrown wide for us to pass. Looking round me with a stony wonder, for ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... enough to consent to marry him for his wealth and title. But I was such a little fool! Sir Roger was a thousand times too good for me, and he and I are both well out of that matter. But that is no excuse for such a villainous deed." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... me. I may want to report to General Lee at any time. The enemy is in our front only three or four miles away. He knows we're here and it was a villainous surprise to him to find us in his way. They say this man Grant is a pounder. So is Lee, when the time comes to pound, but he's that and far more. I tell you, young man, that General Lee has had to trim a lot of Northern generals. McClellan and Pope and Burnside and Hooker ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... King of Spain in his Armada,' and is therefore fair game. So, too, with the four butts of sack of one Artson, and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined effort to colonise Virginia, could but be a drain upon his fortune. After Captain ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... the imperial forehead, the intelligent eye, the confident tread, the true port and stature of a man. But who is this that follows in his track; under the same national sky, surrounded by the same institutions, and yet with those pinched features, that stunted form, that villainous look; is it Papuan, Bushman, or Carib? Fitly representing either of these, though born in a Christian city, and bearing about not only the stamp of violated physical law, but of moral neglect and baseness. And no one needs to be told that there ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... that. . . . You are not aware that Laurentia has taken a violent fancy to Augustus de L——-. Say nothing that might lead her to suspect I have betrayed the secret, but I have all the trouble in the world to get it into her head that authors are the most villainous of matches (in respect of fortune, be it understood). Really Laurentia is quite romantic. How she would hate me if she knew with what irreverence I allude to her ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... destroyed, for the horrid outrage, and villainous murders that she hath committed upon the bodies of the saints. For there is none, as to these things, for cruelty, to be compared with the church of Antichrist, and her followers: For upon whom hath not her cruelty ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... opinion is more correct. I do not believe in the theory of madness! The woman has no common sense; but she is not only not insane, she is artful to a degree. Her outburst of this evening about Evgenie's uncle proves that conclusively. It was VILLAINOUS, simply jesuitical, and it was ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... fear, but their minds were possessed by envy and irrational jealousies of Sertorius's power. And chiefly Perpenna, elevated by the thoughts of his noble birth, and carried away with a fond ambition of commanding the army, threw out villainous discourses in private amongst his acquaintance. "What evil genius," he would say, "hurries us perpetually from worse to worse? We who disdained to obey the dictates of Sylla, the ruler of sea and land, and thus to live at home in peace and quiet, are come hither to our destruction, hoping to enjoy ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... to tie round my neck and lower part of my face and, with that greasy hat pulled down over my eyes and in those worn and shrunken clothes, I must say I looked a pretty villainous person, the very antithesis of the sleek, well-dressed young fellow that had entered the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... my sword on high, and shouted at the top of my voice: "You are all dead folk!" My blow descended on the shoulder of Luigi; but the satyrs who doted on him, had steeled his person round with coasts of mail and such-like villainous defences; still the stroke fell with crushing force. Swerving aside, the sword hit Pantasilea full in nose and mouth. Both she and Luigi grovelled on the ground, while Bachiacca, with his breeches down to heels, screamed ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... rascals," said the French lieutenant. "Did you suppose we should break our word of honour, and join you in your villainous plot?" ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... so, at least on the woman's side. The mock marriage of romance, the deceits practised on the stage and in novels upon the innocent, she believed in without hesitation, everything in the world being more comprehensible than impurity. There might be villainous men, betrayers, seducers, Lucy could not tell; there might be monsters, griffins, fiery dragons, for anything she knew; but a woman abandoned by all her natural guard of modesties and reluctances, moved by passion, capable of being seduced, she ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... thinking less of myself than of that poor devil of a Jack Rutter. There's a fellow who does things by halves; he's only half gone to the bad; and look at the difference between him and us! He's under the thumb of a villainous money-lender; we are solvent citizens. He's taken to drink; we're as sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning to cut him; our difficulty is to keep the pal from the door. Enfin, he begs or borrows, which is stealing ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... the two perplexed fathers met; Simmonds's recent outburst opposed an effectual bar to farther questioning; so Vanrenen was free to deduce all sorts of possibilities from the existence of yet another villainous chauffeur. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... the subject sticks with me, notwithstanding I find I have no the honour of the lady's good opinion. And the more, when I reflect upon her father's brutal curse, and the villainous hard- heartedness of all her family. But, nevertheless, I should be desirous to know (if thou wilt proceed) by what gradations, arts, and contrivances thou effectest thy ingrateful purpose. And, O Lovelace, I conjure thee, if thou art a man, let not the specious devils thou has brought her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... were the ugliest, most villainous-looking Koraks that it would have been possible to select in all the Penzhinsk Gulf settlements, and their obstinacy and sullen stupidity kept me in a chronic state of ill-humour from the time we left Kuil until we reached Penzhina. Only by threatening them periodically with a revolver could ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... the coils of as villainous and bloodthirsty a plot as ever was hatched in a traitor's brain," said Will; "but they little knew that we overlooked their designs the whole time. Thou wast mystified in London, honest Humfrey, I saw it plainly; but I might not then ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... arrant knave. For here is proof of a conspiracy against Mr. Hamilton, who was booked to sail with Captain Annis, and Keith is in it." Denham read the letter to Benjamin, explaining its meaning as he went along, for he was well posted about Keith and the villainous attorney. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... eyes a tiny bit. Now he realises what an evil deed he had begun to execute. He makes the knights step back, and says: "My lords, I bid you all, both strong and weak, high and low, that none of you be so bold as to dare to advance a single step. All of you return now quickly! I have done a villainous deed, and I repent me of my foul design. The lady who outwitted me is very honourable, prudent, and courteous. Her beauty fired me with love for her; because I desired her, I wished to kill her lord and keep her back with me by force. I well deserved this woe, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... Le Portrait du Juif ambulant, might all be bought at his stall, adorned with blue and red wood-cuts. Poor Damon cut but a sorry figure in this goodly company; for though adorned with a crook secundum artem, he looked more rawboned and ugly than Holofernes, and more villainous than the wandering Jew: fully justifying the scorn with which the stiff-skirted Henriette seemed to treat him. It is almost misplaced however to enumerate such follies in a place, which on a fine day ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... sunshine of love does the lad bask with his mother and Peggotty, till Mrs. Copperfield contracts her disastrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! Then how the scene changes. There come harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr. Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's death; the worse banishment to London, and descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange shabby-genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the Micawbers; the flight from intolerable ills in the forlorn hope that David's aunt will take pity on him. Here ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... beset That might have oppressed the dragons of old time Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... seemly, the dignified had its claims. The window was narrow: the ladder—Mary Travers had gone to look at it—was steep: a little, curious, excited crowd was gathering below. Deane saw their hesitation. He rushed to the door and cautiously opened it. The thing was there! Across the very entrance—that villainous oblong case! And from below came a shriek—it was Madame's voice, and ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... of the play, the hero, having gambled away his fortune, faces poverty. His friend who signed his bond is in jail and a kindly uncle has failed to secure the needed relief. In a fit of passion growing out of despair, the hero kills the villainous creditor, and decides to poison his (the hero's) wife and children, and then stab himself. In his dying moments he learns that the uncle has substituted a harmless cordial for the poison and that a long-lost brother has died leaving him a fortune. This bare outline gives ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... in a black rage, for he saw that the other was probably right. 'A singer! A catgut-pincher! A villainous low lute-strummer! No, sir, no! A thousand times no! The niece of Michele Pignaver is incapable of demeaning herself with a mountebank, sir! ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... some villainous-looking countenances in my time, but none more abhorrent of aspect than was that of Pablo Garcia, as, distorted with rage, he started on seeing Lilla resting half supported by me. The handsome regularity of his features ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... step passed in the street, I imagined that it was either Holmes returning or an answer to his advertisement. I tried to read, but my thoughts would wander off to our strange quest and to the ill-assorted and villainous pair whom we were pursuing. Could there be, I wondered, some radical flaw in my companion's reasoning. Might he be suffering from some huge self-deception? Was it not possible that his nimble and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... what a burning shame! What a villainous old hag that Pew woman must be! Bessie told me she was a Tartar, but this beats everything. Expelled! Your conduct impeached because you let me talk to you—I, Bessie's cousin, a man who at the worst has some claim to be ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... seven years of age was tall, muscular, and excelled in all physical exercises; but the villainous cardinal had endeavored in every way to dwarf his intellect, so that his mind remained almost a blank. Both the young king and his brother at this early age had acquired a very remarkable degree of courtly grace. A chronicler of the times, speaking of the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... a penny in the world. I lived at the school, and received a salary of thirty pounds, half of which had to go towards the support of my mother. What could possibly have been more villainous? What earthly prospect was there of my being able ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... this pistol and keep 'em quiet while I walk on this scoundrel a little!" Unwillingly enough, I took the weapon, while Anthony forthwith stood upon his prostrate antagonist and proceeded very deliberately to wipe his villainous-looking boots upon the gentleman's fine blue spencer; this done, he stepped down and beckoned the squat man to approach, who came in, though very unwillingly, and closely followed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... did not trouble himself to make this journey because he desired to serve the Ydallcao, for another would have done it as well, but he did it with a villainous motive and from the ill-will he bore to Salebatacao whom the King held in prison at Bisnaga; and the reason that he had this wicked motive was because Salebatacao knew that Acadacao was the man that had caused the Ydallcao ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... then, throwing herself on her knees before the knight, she shewed him all the adventure. Hardly would Carogne believe the treachery of his companion; but, when convinced, he replied, "Since it is so, lady, I pardon you; but the knight shall die for this villainous deed." Accordingly, Jaques le Grys was accused of the crime, in the court of the earl of Alencon. But, as he was greatly loved of his lord, and as the evidence was very slender, the earl gave judgment against the accusers. Hereupon John Carogne appealed ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... ruin him. That Lady Chetwynde Was anxious about her husband, and, hearing of his illness, followed him from place to place; that, owing to her intense anxiety, she broke down and nearly died; that she finally reached this place to find her villainous servant—the one whom she had dismissed—acting as her husband's valet. That she turned him off on the spot, whereupon he went to the authorities, and lodged some malicious and insane charges against her. But Lady Chetwynde would have more than this to say. She could show certain vials, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... Charteris, rapidly diagnosing the case. 'By Jove, if he comes rotting about with me I'll kill him.' Having to do anything in a desperate hurry always made Charteris's temper slightly villainous. He turned the corner at a sharp trot, and came upon two youths who seemed to be engaged in the harmless occupation of trying to ride a bicycle. They were of the type which he held in especial aversion, the Rural Hooligan type, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... Irving sailed for Sicily in a Genoese packet. Off the island of Planoca it was overpowered and captured by a little pickaroon, with lateen sails and a couple of guns, and a most villainous crew, in poverty-stricken garments, rusty cutlasses in their hands and stilettos and pistols stuck in their waistbands. The pirates thoroughly ransacked the vessel, opened all the trunks and portmanteaus, but found little that they wanted except brandy and provisions. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... was to see him. "My cough is nearly gone," he said, unwinding his wrappings, "and I could not stay at home after this wonderful letter—three pages about chemical analysis, which he does me the honour to think I can understand, two of commissions for villainous compounds, and one of protestations that 'I will be drowned; ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Rushton, "we'll see about that! The authorities of Winchester are performing their duty after a pretty fashion, truly—to permit these villainous plots to be hatched tinder their very noses. What ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... dignified position of a petty officer. But though, in similar cases, I had seen such effects produced upon some of the crew; yet, in the present instance, I knew better than that;—it was solely brought about by his consorting with with those villainous, irritable, ill-tempered cannon; more especially from his being subject to the orders of those deformed blunderbusses, Priming ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... far did his perfidy extend? Had he merely known where she was concealed, or had he seen her, spoken with her, wooed her all along? He had won her; so much was plain; and he could scarce have done so during the brief journey to his villa. O villainous Marcian! O fickle, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... to speak. The villainous smile died out of his face, and his voice dropped again ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... upon the villainous faces of the men who had come to make prisoner of him, he bethought ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... carpenter, to whom he said, "Make a cross[FN69] of wood for this fellow." Quoth Bedreddin, "What wilt thou do with it?" "I mean to nail thee upon it," replied the Vizier, "and parade thee throughout the city." "And why wilt thou use me thus? asked Bedreddin; and the Vizier answered, "Because of thy villainous mess of pomegranate-seed and for that it lacked pepper." "And because it lacked pepper," said Bedreddin, "wilt thou do all this to me? Is it not enough that thou hast laid my shop in ruins and smashed my gear and imprisoned me and fed ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... meeting them a large Frenchman and a small Irish boy. The Frenchman had an immense quantity of hair of all sorts on his face, nearly hiding his features, which, as what was visible of them had a particularly villainous air, was about the best thing he could have done to them; and on his head he carried a something of felt, which indisputably proved the proposition that matter may exist without form. The Irish youth sported a well-meant, but not very ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... received in the order in which they presented themselves for approval. Two of them bore the ineffaceable mark of the public-house so plainly written on their villainous faces, that even I could see it. My uncle ironically asked us to favor him with our opinions. Lady Claudia answered with her sweetest smile: "Pardon me, General—we are here to learn." The words were nothing; ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... a most villainous countenance, what with his native swarthiness and his broken and dented nose, so horridly embellished with a gash of red paint. He was broad and squat and fearfully powerful, being but a bulk of gristly muscle; and when he leaped a gully or a brook, he seemed ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... and villainous," he says to himself, "than possess all the wealth of the Indies with a clear conscience. I will be a villain," he cries. "I will, at great expense and inconvenience to myself, murder the good old man, get the hero accused ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... accompanied: for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;— Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shaft the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... glittering sides, sailing aloft, and often describing an arc in his descent, disappear on the surface of the water. Far off, the lofty jet of the whale might be seen, and nearer at hand the prowling shark, that villainous footpad of the seas, would come skulking along, and, at a wary distance, regard us with his evil eye. At times, some shapeless monster of the deep, floating on the surface, would, as we approached, sink slowly into the blue waters, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... as soon as we began to buck the rapids they came upon us in clouds. They got into our nostrils, into our ears, into our mouths, into our eyes even, and our faces and hands were streaked with blood from their bites. They were villainous, hellish. Hubbard frequently remarked that the mosquitoes seemed friendly in contrast—and the mosquitoes were by no means considerate of our feelings and comfort either. We had purchased some cheesecloth at Rigolet for face nets, but the trial we had given it during the afternoon had proved ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... you've a villainous imagination." Mr. Hadley grinned. "I mean no such matter. Nay, I'll lay a guinea, Harry Boyce is not gone ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... arrivals were the Revenue Service men, and as it chanced, they had come just in the nick of time. For Joe Durgan, Branks, Harry Mole, Max, the villainous half-breed, and others at the huts, were being reinforced by Bego's followers who had hurried up from the bonfire; and they were beating back the soldiers, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler

... before she was aware of his presence. Without a word of warning, he threw his long arms around her waist, and endeavored to drag or carry her to the Date grove. There could be no mistaking his intentions, and he would no doubt have succeeded in carrying out his villainous design—for the terrified girl was in a half fainting condition, and unable from the suddenness of the attack, to offer much resistance—when Arthur Carlton, who had been attracted to the spot by her shrieks ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... Nice teeth on which a little dentistry will work wonders. Not a bad figure, but doesn't know how to carry herself; has a villainous fashion of slouching, with her hands on her hips. Plenty of hair, but of terrifying redness; sullen expression of the eyes; fiendish profusion of freckles: may have to be skinned. Excellent nose. Speaks with appalling frankness at times ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... Jonathan Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a pretty consistent picaresque satire, in which the hero ends where Fathom by all rights should have ended,—on the gallows. Fathom is the weakest of all its author's novels; Jonathan Wild ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... a counter, on which was set a dim oil-lamp. There were a few bottles in sight, and a villainous-looking fellow appeared to preside over the establishment. The latter looked up ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Lady Vincent pushed her way through this crowd of "unwashed" workmen, whose greasy, dusty, and begrimed clothes soiled her bright, rich raiment as she passed, and among whom the mingled fumes of tobacco, whisky, garlic, and coal- smoke formed "the rankest compound of villainous smells that ever ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... come back! Och! ye villainous pack, Ye slaves of the Saxon, ye blind bastard bunch! Whelps weak and unstable, I only am able The Celt-hating Sassenach wholly to s-c-rr-unch! Yet for me ye won't work, But sneak homeward and shirk, Ye've ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... She's sitting to Brierly—that's my host—for his latest effort. He's painting her as the Madonna or Britannia—I really forget which. A new type, you know. The servants in this house are engaged for their faces. They had a villainous scoundrel of a man-servant—a returned soldier—engaged as Judas Iscariot, who bolted last week with the silver spoons. But all this is beside the point, Mr. Barrant, and I must not waste your time. You have come here for a specific purpose—to turn me inside ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... without conditions, everything of which he died possessed. The will was dated in June of the previous summer—he recalled a two days' absence of his father's at that time—and was witnessed, in a villainous hand, by Timothy Queed. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... evening Spedella's fencing rooms were fairly thronged with devotees of the ancient art of puncturing. The master of the place was a tall Italian, lank and lean, all bone and muscle, with a Don Quixote visage, barring a certain villainous expression of the eyes, irreconcilable with the chivalrous knight-errant of distressed Dulcineas. But every man with a bad eye is not necessarily a rascallion, and Spedella, perhaps, was better than he looked. With a most melancholy glance he was now watching ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... Ardvoirlich, either from a fit of sudden fury or deep malice long entertained against his unsuspecting friend, stabbed Lord Kilpont to the heart, and escaped from the camp of Montrose, having killed a sentinel who attempted to detain him. Bishop Guthrie gives us a reason for this villainous action, that Lord Kilpont had rejected with abhorrence a proposal of Ardvoirlich to assassinate Montrose. But it does not appear that there is any authority for this charge, which rests on mere suspicion. Ardvoirlich, the assassin, certainly ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... the younger priest, smiling, "that you must see a great many of these nomadic individuals in this quaint little town of yours. I have been here but a week and that is the sixth villainous looking rascal who has presented himself ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... such a purchase, and continued to load his gun after his old fashion, exciting the admiration of all beholders by the skill with which he avoided the risks of spilling or mixing his powder and shot. His gun was a single- barrelled flint-lock, endowed, moreover, with a villainous habit of 'kicking.' It was due to this that Yermolai's right cheek was permanently swollen to a larger size than the left. How he ever succeeded in hitting anything with this gun, it would take a shrewd man to discover—but he did. He had too a setter-dog, by name ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... up to my knees and soaking wet up to my waist. For the first time in my life I was grieved to the bone at the inadequacy of my wardrobe, and even when I had donned my Sunday best my appearance was undoubtedly villainous from the London point of view. I feathered myself as finely as my resources permitted, but it was a homely, uncouth yeoman that raced downstairs and awaited her coming. I drew the curtains, lit the candles, kicked the fire into a blaze, and built it ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... on, Teach, with fuses glowing under his hat, hailed him, and, standing on the taffrail, defied him and drank to his bloody end in a goblet of rum.... Teach, surrounded by his sullen and villainous gang, shrieked out the chorus of a sea song as the sloop drew near and, when she had drifted close enough, he pelted her ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... burgess, but likewise being one of the instruments in promoting and presenting the scandalous, insolent, and seditious petition, commonly called the Kentish petition, to the last house of commons, was guilty of promoting a scandalous, villainous, and groundless reflection upon that house, by aspersing the members with receiving French money, or being in the interest of France; for which offence he was ordered to be committed to Newgate, and to be prosecuted by his majesty's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... below, one needed only to lift one's eyes to see, afar, perched high upon a smiling slope of green, with the highway to Millau at its foot and a beetling cliff behind, the Chateau de Montalais. Seated on that terrasse, late in the afternoon of his second day in Nant, discussing a Picon and a villainous caporal cigarette of the Regie (to whose products a rugged constitution was growing slowly reconciled anew) Duchemin let his vision dwell upon the distant chateau almost ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... Irving, or Maude Adams, or Julia Marlowe in their best plays, is to have received a deeper insight into human nature, and a stronger purpose to become sympathetic and true, but who can afford to sanction all that is base and villainous is the institution of the modern theater for the sake of learning sympathy and truth and human nature from a few worthy actors, when he may find all of this as truthfully, if not as artistically, set forth ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... was—ground together in his mortar saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. The Chinese, to be sure, had invented gunpowder long before, but they—poor innocents—did not know of anything worse to do with it than to make it into fire-crackers. With the introduction of "villainous saltpeter" war ceased to be the vocation of the nobleman and since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was something in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villainous low," and has a huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an unbiased and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the phrenologists call "good heads" ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... visit this coast with a very different object in view," he answered. "For the Spaniards and Portuguese, especially, come here to carry off the unfortunate inhabitants as slaves, and sometimes the villainous crews of their craft, if in want of provisions and water, will help themselves, without ceremony, from any merchantman they may fall in with. And should she have a rich cargo on board, they have been known, I have heard say, to make her people walk ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... answer, or at last Gods wrath, as they deserve. I often think of the good Gerson who doubts whether anything good should be [written and] published. If it is not done, many souls are neglected who could be delivered: but if it is done, the devil is there with malignant, villainous tongues without number which envenom and pervert everything, so that nevertheless the fruit [the usefulness of the writings] is prevented. Yet what they gain thereby is manifest. For while they have lied so shamefully against us and by means of lies wished ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther

... blunder, but, leaving out of count any humane consideration for the girl's feelings, he must have admired the stage- craft displayed by her abductors. If cool skill were worthy of success they had earned it in full measure. In fact, the achievement would have ranked high in the villainous annals of Massowah were it not for the blind chance that separated Mulai Hamed from Royson ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... in Republics; and if the use of speech be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices. Rhetoric, Plato says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in democracies it is too common to hide thought in words, to overlay it, to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the Irish girl, when they found themselves five minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs, "begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me everything that has happened to ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... There was a villainous expression upon his lips as he watched the girl moving over the floor; and once or twice I caught him scowling upon Chane, who, in his usual Irish way, was "blarneying" with Jesusita, and helping her ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... the same promptness as before. A villainous-faced man with close-cropped hair stood ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... a care! We who keep pets must bear their pecks sometimes. Poor knave! Ha! ha! thou'rt growing villainous! [Laughs ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... from Biisk and I know everyone there. His real name is Pouzikoff and the short-haired girl with him is his mistress. He is the commissar of the 'Cheka' and she is the agent of this establishment. Last August the two of them shot with their revolvers seventy bound officers from Kolchak's army. Villainous, cowardly murderers! Now they have come here for a reconnaissance. They wanted to stay in my house but I knew them too ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Sir Edmund said, but believe me, Lady Rose, you have neither of you anything to go upon. You think it impossible, but you don't either of you see the immense force of the temptation. Some crimes may need a villainous nature. This, if you could see it truly, only needs one that is human under temptation, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... at that very bar where I met him. The old Palaeolithic man, judging from the few remains we have of him, must have had an unspeakably savage and, to our way of thinking, repulsive and horrible aspect, with his villainous low receding forehead, broad nose, great projecting upper jaw, and retreating chin; to meet such a man face to face in Piccadilly would frighten a nervous person of the present time. But his teeth were not unlike our own, only very much larger and more powerful, and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... ceased to be natural creatures and put on the oppressive shrouds, wraps and disguises which we label in the villainous aggregate civilisation, we ceased to know either how to teach or how to learn. We exchanged the freedom and spaciousness of life for a cramped existence compounded of spectacles and bad grammar, this complicated still further by the multiplication tables, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... it from her and made her sit down on the bench and resume her knitting; then, passing behind her with a laugh, he placed it over her own shoulders; after which he moved to and fro before her, his hands in his pockets and his cigarette in his teeth. He was ashamed of the cigarette—a villainous false note; but she allowed, liked, begged him to smoke, and what he said to her on it, in one of the pleasantries she benevolently missed, was that he did so for fear of doing worse. That only ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... arrayed For revolution! To foil their villainous crusade Unsheathe again the sacred ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... to the worst, you can defy obscurity by committing a judiciously villainous murder. Perhaps Jack the Ripper had a passion for publicity, and liked to see his name in the papers; until he grew blase and retired upon ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... went on as before, speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on a summer evening at Barnes, and slip down the lawn to the boat-house, that we might launch the dear old pater's wherry, and have a moonlight trip, with soft singing of part songs, to which I know I growled a villainous bass. Dear pater, had he lived I might have stayed in the old country, and tried to keep up the old place; but I fear I should have disappointed him, and so—well, all may ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... English officer, General Sir Richard Church, to suppress the brigands. General Church, who kept good order among his soldiers, and who made them pay for everything, gained the confidence of the peasantry, and restored a fair measure of security. It was he who finally brought to justice the villainous Don Ciro Anicchiarico—priest and brigand—who declared at his trial with offhand indifference that he supposed he had murdered about seventy people first and last. When a brother priest was sent to give him the consolations of religion, Ciro cut him short, saying, "Stop that chatter, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... through the lock and out of his spacesuit, he reached down the neck of his coveralls and carefully extracted the Security key in its flat, plastiskin packet, from between his shoulder blades. At least the villainous captain had not gotten his hands on this, he thought, and whatever damage had been done to Hot Rod ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... or that the bully will say one thing more, even from the bottom of the stairs. The reader really hopes this; and he cannot get rid of the fancy that the author hopes so too. I cannot at the moment recall that Dickens ever killed a comic villain, except Quilp, who was deliberately made even more villainous than comic. There can be no serious fears for the life of Mr. Wegg in the muckcart; though Mr. Pecksniff fell to be a borrower of money, and Mr. Mantalini to turning a mangle, the human race has the comfort of thinking they are still alive: and one might ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... I thought so, that you might have all the talk to yourself. You had better let me speak; for if my thoughts fly to any pitch, I shall make villainous signs. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... facile to accompany the eloquence of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics—"Abuses of the Aristocracy"—"Jobs of the Priesthood"—"Expenses of Army kept up for Peers' younger sons"—"Wars contracted for the villainous purpose of raising the rents of the land-owners"—all arithmetically dished up, and seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a misdeed, every clergyman who has dishonored his cloth; as if such instances were fair specimens of average gentlemen ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... not get your 'footer' cap for it, which seems such a paltry punishment for so villainous ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... of dollars," Vine answered contemptuously. "There are other things worth thinking about. If I strike at you and your friends, it is not for the money or the notoriety I could make out of it. It is because I want to attack a villainous system, because I consider that you and Weiss and the rest of you are really doing your best to throttle the ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... for pay-day, more like," said Keefe, a black-browed, villainous fellow countryman of Blaney's and, strange to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma. Winterbourne walked to the middle of the arena, to take a more general glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. The great cross in the center was covered with shadow; it was only as ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James

... (members of the) Boule, that it was possible, if one wished, to keep quiet, and not to be troubled with lawsuits and vexatious business; but I have now fallen in with such unlooked-for charges and such villainous accusers that, were it possible, it seems to me even unborn generations must fear for what is before them. For through this sort of men those who have done no wrong are in as great danger as those who have committed the greatest ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... occupation had quite absorbed him and taken him away both from public and private affairs. Young men of the richer sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit, 'which was not unamusing.' And hence bitter enmities had arisen; the professors of knowledge had revenged themselves by calling him a villainous corrupter of youth, and by repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when there is nothing else to be ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato

... to be white egrets. Now at home I am strongly against the killing of these creatures, and have so expressed myself on many occasions. But, looking from the beautiful white plumage of these villainous mauraders, to the wrinkled countenance of the grateful weary old savage, I could not fan a spark of regret. And from the straight line of their retreating flight I like to think that the rest of the flock ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... dreadful significance than appeared to the general eye, and that Ruth Oliver, in her desperate interruption of these treacherous nuptials, had not only made good her prior claim to Randolph Stone as her husband, but had pointed him out to all the world as the villainous author of that crime which for so long a time had occupied my own ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... the worse for liquor, and a more wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were bloated, bloody, and dirty. I won't say they were villainous. They were merely filthy and vile. They were vile of appearance, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... Moylan occupied the back seat, some baggage wedged tightly between to keep them more secure on the slippery cushion, while facing them, and clinging to his support with both hands, was a pock-marked Mexican, with rather villainous face and ornate dress, and excessively polite manners. He had joined the little party at Dodge, smiling happily at sight of Miss Molly's face when she unveiled, although his small knowledge of English prevented any extended effort at conversation. Moylan, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... than the proportion drawn from the well-to-do classes, so is it likewise with beggars. The other classes, in proportion to their numbers, contribute just about as many beggars to the community as the working population, and such beggars are generally the most hardened and villainous specimens of their tribe. With the beggar sprung from the working population one is sometimes able to do something, but a beggar who has descended from the higher walks of life is one of the most hopeless, ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... caught fish to mend their mess dinners, and prayed only for the speedy coming of the enemy. Even Howard's heart failed him now. English sailors would do what could be done by man, but they could not fight with famine. 'Awake, Madam,' he wrote to the Queen, 'awake, for the love of Christ, and see the villainous treasons round about you.' He goaded her into ordering supplies for one more month, but this was to be positively the last. The victuallers inquired if they should make further preparations. She answered peremptorily, 'No'; and again the weeks ran on. The contractors, it seemed, ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... appeared on deck accompanied by one of the most villainous-looking seamen that ever ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... seemed familiar to Joe. He carried a rifle at a low trail, and passed slowly ahead with evident distrust. The lad believed he recognized that head, with its tangled black hair, and when he saw the swarthy, villainous countenance turned full ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... Salviati's daughter, the widow of Giovanni de' Medici, "delle Bande Nere," who resided near Lorenzino, certainly heard loud cries which terrified her, but it was not an unusual occurrence. Lorenzino had, in his villainous scheme, devised a cunning decoy to accustom neighbours and passers-by to noisy behaviour. He had repeatedly gathered in his house groups of young men with swords, whom he instructed to cross their weapons as in serious self-defence, and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... not be answered, that they share in them only in so far as they please themselves, and conceive themselves to be good? for certainly, they are not either really, or even apparently, found in any one of those who are very depraved and villainous; we may almost say not even in those who are bad men at all: for they are at variance with themselves and lust after different things from those which in cool reason they wish for, just as men who fail of Self-Control: I ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... yelling over with it sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however, being as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more gaudy ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... heat of the mid-day come forth from their holes, hastily land again from their canoes, in which they had been carried beyond the Cichican* valley, differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends, and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before on all the country towards the extreme north as far as the ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... is operating so that he appears like a corked volcano! You can see that he takes Austrian money; his skin has got to be the exact colour of Munz. He has the greenish-yellow eyes of those elective, thrice-abhorred vampyres who feed on patriot-blood. He is condemned without trial by his villainous countenance, like an ungrammatical preface to a book. His tongue refuses to confess, but nature is stronger:—observe his knees. Now this is guilt. It is execrable guilt. He is a nasty object. Nature has in her wisdom shortened ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... may say 'ah' now as much as you please," said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. "For there's the baste that did you all the damage, an' we'll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... strengthened by her thin, affected speech. Across her narrow brow a fringe of hair fell which she was continually crimping with an iron heated in the kitchen stove, permeating the room with a lingering and villainous odor of burned hair. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... like smiths at their forges Worked the red St. George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horse-guards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher burned the old-fashioned fire ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... into the Wolverine. However cloudy the atmosphere between the two, the ride had seemed short—so short that Ward felt the jar of surprise when he looked down and saw the cabin below them. He glanced at Billy Louise, guessed from her somber face that the villainous mood still held her, and sighed a little. He was not deeply concerned by her mood. He understood her too well to descend into any slough of despondence because she was cross. Then he remembered the reason she had given—the reason he had not believed at the time. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... you've seen the place," said he. "It's a villainous den; but I didn't think any one here would be likely to do better with it than I would. Anyhow, you'll find hot water. I unearthed—literally—another kettle. And it's the first door at the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... answered my desires; and my purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some of those villainous vermin: for I hate them perfectly, because they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much: indeed, so much, that in my judgment, all men that keep Otter dogs ought to have a Pension from the Commonwealth to incourage them to destroy the very breed of those base Otters, they ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... some had on portions of battered civilized apparel. Very few could make up a full suit of clothes; but contented themselves with either a coat, or a shirt, or a pair of pantaloons, or even with only a hat, as the case might be. They were very swarthy, squat, villainous-looking savages, with big heads, low foreheads, coarse hair, and beady ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... to the evidence that he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts which he brought forward in support of that charge—being identical with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it not at a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet, and the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution, and those framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him, that although my ipse dixit may not be as great ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... it, and fasten it tightly. I have shorn off his hand, and he would very speedily bleed to death. If you staunch the wound he may last till his comrades come back, as they doubtless will after we have left; they will carry him away and maybe save his life. He is a villainous ruffian, no doubt, but 'tis enough for me that I have one death on my ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... any passport," describes his reception, and adds:—Since the Earl of Feversham, who had commanded the army against the Prince, was come without a passport, he was for some days put in arrest.—Swift. Base and villainous. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... generally to smoke, remarking for form's sake that he "hopes it is not offensive," while you, under the burden of his kindness, smile a fashionable lie, and reply, "Not in the least." So our Gratzer withdrew to the farther end of the seat and began to smoke a most villainous cigar, and continued to smoke, lighting another when one was finished. I soon began to succumb to the poisonous effects of the close atmosphere, for, although we kept our windows open—it was the middle of June—the Gratzer with true German caution kept ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... analyze it into its trumpery constituents. It was the old story. Unconsciously I had built up the image of a particular kind of man, and when such a man appeared I had recognized him at a glance. The villainous Tartar face: I had looked for it. The fierce, furtive, hunted manner; the restless suspicion; the mop of grayish-brown hair. I had expected them all, and there they were. My man would have those ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... Challoner's place and Kiti, where Larmer dwelt with his villainous associates, was but ten miles. Yet, although Larmer had now been living on the island for a year, Challoner had only once met and spoken ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke

... sorely damaged. Two views of Killarney in the weather of the period—that means July, and raining in torrents—and consequently the scene, for aught discoverable, might be the Gaboon. Portrait of Joe Atlee, aetatis four years, with a villainous squint, and something that looks like a plug in the left jaw. A Skye terrier, painted, it is supposed, by himself; not to recite unframed prints of various celebrities of the ballet, in accustomed attitudes, with the Reverend Paul Bloxham blessing some children—though ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... sing, regardless of the crimes for which they were sent to prison. I recollect at one time we had two horse-thieves, two rapists—one with a sentence of forty years—three murderers, two hog-thieves, and several others of equally villainous records, and, last of all, the author! But this choir will compare favorably with some of the high-toned church choirs outside! To return, think ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... bridge, to where there stood a crucifix called La Belle Croix, within speaking distance of the English in the Tournelles. Thence she summoned Glansdale and his men to surrender, promising that their lives should be spared. They answered with derisive shouts and villainous abuse. Still commanding her patience, which was only equalled by her courage, and before returning to the town, she told them that, in spite of their boasting, the time was near at hand when they would be driven forth, and that their leader would never see England again. That ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... ornamental: being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... of all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see the last of my gun and me. I dare say "villainous saltpetre," as the great playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go into my pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, which I bound upon Peggy's withers. And as if all this had not been ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... that there is not room for two Spanish ambassadors at Court, so I had to fall back upon de Ayala after all. Indeed, twice have I seen that exalted priest upon the subject of the well-deserved death of his villainous servant, and, after much difficulty, for having lost several men in such brawls, he thought his honour touched, he took the fifty gold angels—to be transmitted to the fellow's family, of course, or so he said—and gave a receipt. Here ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... straightforwardness of the relation made it an amazing thing to hear, even more amazing than it would have been made by a more imaginative handling. Her obvious inability to cope with the unusual and villainous, combined with her entire willingness to obliterate herself in any manner in her whole-souled tenderness for the one present object of her existence, were things a man could not be unmoved by, even though experience led him to smile at the lack of knowledge of the world ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... what it costs me, to humiliate myself thus; it is intolerable to me, and my heart is breaking—for the architect, the architect has trampled upon me as if I were his servant; he wished—I heard him with these ears—he shrieked after me a villainous hope that I might be smothered in my own fat—and the physician has told me I may die of apoplexy! Leave me, leave me. I know those Romans are capable of anything. Well—here I am; fetch me my saffron-colored pallium, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... years before we, in our quarter of the world, ever dreamt of civilization.—'Of all the sentiments, passions or virtues which in their divers turns affect the life of a man, the influence and emotion of Love is surely the greatest and highest. We do not here speak of the base and villainous craving of bodily appetite; but of that pure desire of the unfettered soul which beholding perfection, straightway and naturally flies to the same. This love doth so elevate and instruct a man, that he seeketh nothing better than to be ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... was destitute of those fine moral instincts which are born with men, but never acquired; and in his way of estimating his fellow men, and the canons of honour, there was occasionally perceptible a faint flavour of the villainous, and an undefined savour, at times, of brimstone. I know also that when his temper, which was nothing very remarkable, was excited, he could be savage and brutal enough; and I believe he had often been violent and cowardly in his altercations ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... will just yet," laughed the captain. "However, as soon as this villainous weather is a bit abated, I'll be off across the Island to do your little errand, and only ask a kiss of the bride for my pains; but if the parson be at Portsmouth there will be no getting him to budge till the water ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... should be prosecuted at "His Majesty's Expence," stating that no endeavour would be wanting on their part to render that prosecution successful, and praying that, in order to bring to justice "the Wicked Contriver and Instigator of this Villainous Scheme," His Majesty might be pleased to offer by proclamation a reward for Cranstoun's apprehension. The signatories included the Mayor and Rector of Henley, divers county magnates, and also the local magistrates, Lords Macclesfield and Cadogan, whose ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead



Words linked to "Villainous" :   wicked, villain, nefarious



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