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Sneer   Listen
noun
Sneer  n.  
1.
The act of sneering.
2.
A smile, grin, or contortion of the face, indicative of contempt; an indirect expression or insinuation of contempt. "Who can refute a sneer?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books



... achieve new successes and triumphs! She would frequent the circles of American ministers, for the express purpose of meeting there her countrywomen, and overwhelming by her magnificence those who had once, dared to sneer at that high flavor of Indian blood which had given luster to her raven hair and fire to her dark eyes! Returning to England after this royal progress on the Continent she would pass her days in cherishing her beauty and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... help his friends. He's a kind man and lots of fun. It's not his fault if you don't get on. It's your own fault. You don't have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. Abraham Lincoln ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... newspapers; while the Zulus, one of whom would have converted Bishop Colenso from Christianity, if he had been a Christian, are importing steel plows by hundreds every year. It has captured the enemy's fortresses, and turned his guns. Lord Chesterfield's parlor, where an infidel club met to sneer at religion, is now a vestry, where the prayers of the penitent are offered to Christ. Gibbon's house, at Lake Lemon, is now a hotel; one room of which is devoted to the sale of Bibles. Voltaire's printing press, from which he issued his infidel tracts, has been appropriated ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... countenanced by Malone, yourself, and others." An assertion this which savors little of legal accuracy. For Chalmers, so far from being the first to suggest that Shakespeare passed his adolescent years in an attorney's office, was the first to sneer at Malone for bringing forward that conjecture.[C] Malone, in his first edition of Shakespeare's works, published in 1790, has this passage, in the course of a discussion of the period when "Hamlet" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... a slight sneer in the Southerner's voice. Jerry perceived it and thought it directed against him. Instantly his pride rose and ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... for them. I told how I had seen them, in our New England coast towns, covered, as a ship is covered with barnacles, by grandchildren who rode on their shoulders and sat astride of their necks as they walked down the village streets. And now at last the sneer left my old man's loose lips. He had grandchildren somewhere. He twisted uneasily in his seat, coughed, and finally took out a big red handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... think you need to have me tell you," he said, with a sneer. "I don't think Mr. Reynolds is very prudent to employ ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger

... was his expression as he spoke, so cruelly sarcastic his voice, that he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his single eye-glass and his sneer. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some, little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... was well established among the blacks and the poorer whites. Education, however, has thrown the ban of disrepute upon witchcraft and conjuration. The stern frown of the preacher, who looks upon superstition as the ally of the Evil One; the scornful sneer of the teacher, who sees in it a part of the livery of bondage, have driven this quaint combination of ancestral traditions to the remote chimney corners of old black aunties, from which it is difficult for the stranger to unearth them. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... little harmless practicing on Miss Spurry's infirmities, to frequent compliances of a soothing nature, and the "young ass" had been blind to the direction of one and the other. It seemed almost right that the vicar should moralize, that Edward Dixon should sneer, and that Mr. Gervase should grow purple with contempt. Men, Lucian thought, were like judges, who may pity the criminal in their hearts, but are forced to vindicate the outraged majesty of the law by a severe sentence. He felt the same ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... Servadac, with a contemptuous sneer; "that flag, you know, has been hoisted but a few ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... Somewhere in this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinning and reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched the faith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer of yours, with some cynical and sceptical disparagement of God and of the man who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul that was enthusiastic to be full of scepticisms and doubts. You wronged a ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... of service is the degree in which he loses himself in his pupils,—the degree in which he lives and toils and sacrifices for them just for the pure joy that it brings him. Once you have tasted this joy, no carping sneer of the cynic can cause you to lose faith in your calling. Material rewards sink into insignificance. You no longer work with your eyes upon the clock. The hours are all too short for the work that you would do. You are as light-hearted and as happy as a child,—for you have lost ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... of the scholar should betray a little ostentation, yet a well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous incumbrance ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... whether to approve or condemn; while extremists take advantage of this hesitation to lay down the sternest dogmas, and to thunder denunciations at every head that will not bow to their ipse dixit. The questions at issue are not to be dismissed with a sneer at fanaticism and over-scrupulousness on the one hand, and with a protest against unwarrantable liberality on the other. The whole subject must be reexamined with reference to fundamental gospel principles by both parties, in a spirit of Christian moderation, and with the desire of ascertaining not ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... unrelenting man to desist from his merciless purpose, but he received their protests with a sneer: "When you leave me, my greater ally, hunger, will draw near. It will come, that I am sure of." Then followed an uproar of confused voices; mutinous troopers, now become bold by the wine they ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... as a sneer, but Harrison's good friends took it up. Log Cabin and Hard Cider became their war-cry, and the election was known as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign. And soon many simple country people came to believe that Harrison really lived in a log ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... fixed his attention on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope. Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing the Academy of Language and the other Academies—painting, literature, every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... to keep beyond the reach of the sarcasms and sophisms, the insidious and pestilent teachings, of modern infidelity. Satan adapts his temptations to all classes. He assails the illiterate with a jest or sneer, while he meets the educated with scientific objections and philosophical reasoning, alike calculated to excite distrust or contempt of the Scriptures. Even youth of little experience presume to insinuate doubts concerning the fundamental principles of Christianity. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... away from them through boycotts or when they may be turned into the streets through the bitter hatred of hard-hearted priests, but the most trying persecution is that which comes from the insinuating remark, the sneer of the supercilious and the doubt of the envious. The taunt of hypocrisy is often thrown into the teeth of native Christians. Their motives are frequently impugned. I was profoundly impressed with the answer they usually give to such persecutions. They reply by saying: ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... terrible Bishop, the man who had put military discipline into the ranks of his mighty organization, rode his horse as the Kaiser would have liked to ride entering Paris. His small, bitter, fanatical face wore a deeply carved sneer. His great black beard flapped in the breeze, and he sang as he rode. Behind him came huge floats depicting in startling tableaux the hideous menace of the gooseberry. Bands blared and crashed. Then, rank on rank, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. 'Come, none of your tricks here, you young vagabond; they won't do. What's ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... chance any other way with this whipper-snapper. I'll go to-night beneath Eva's window and sing a serenade which will surely win her heart. I'll not lose her even if this great knight should prove to be a great singer." Every time he thought of Walther, it was with a sneer. On the whole, Beckmesser was a nasty little man, even though he was quite a singer. He was old and ugly and it was quite ridiculous of him to think ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... frigates taken to flight, as of course they would, the British fleet, if not divided, would certainly not be led towards the main body of the enemy. Concentration of purpose, singleness of aim, was more than ever necessary, now that time pressed and a decision had been reached; but the sneer of the French officer reproduces the idle chatter of the day in London streets and drawing-rooms. These, in turn, but echoed and swelled the murmurs of insubordination and envy in the navy itself, at the departure from the routine methods of officialism, by passing over the claims of undistinguished ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... are Kingsley's words: "We may blame those ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at their weaknesses, the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity, we fancy we discover. We must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been dead so long, flashed up for one splendid moment ere it sank into the darkness ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... many men in the Near or Far East who have not some cause to know His Highness," he replied in a serious tone, tinged by the suspicion of a sneer. "He is about the finest specimen of the well-veneered savage that even Russia has produced for the last century. He is a brilliant scholar, statesman, and soldier; delightful among his equals—or those he chooses to consider ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... also throughout the whole term had to encounter the hardly disguised hostility of nearly all the great leaders of his own party in both Houses of Congress. Conkling never spoke of him in public or private without a sneer. I suppose he did not visit the White House or any Department during President Hayes's term. Mr. Blaine was much disappointed by President Hayes's refusal to give Mr. Frye a place in the Cabinet, which he desired as a means of composing some incipient jealousies in Maine. Hamlin, who was a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... at Bill Chester significantly, and his look said, "Take care, my friend! We do not allow a man to sneer at another man in this country unless he is willing to stand certain unpleasant consequences. Our duels are not always ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... of courtiers and inquisitive people, and he was very glad to ease himself of some part of the load which laid heavy on his heart, within the hearing of the Cardinal's creatures, and which he would perhaps have told him to his face. "Faith, gentlemen," said he, with a sneer, "there is nothing like being zealous and eager in the service of kings and great princes: you have seen what a gracious reception his Majesty has given me; you are likewise witnesses in what an obliging manner the queen ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the world knows, are a kindly, forgiving people; and though they cast the epithet, they do so in manner tolerant and with light arpeggio—of Yankee sneer and bitterness containing not a trace. They cast it as one casts a coin into the hand of some maundering beggar, with commingled oh-wells and philosophical pity. For in the Frenchman of the Paris of to-day, though there run ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... worse. Forsaken by th'inspiring Nine, I waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, If Stella were unsung to-day: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic license; And ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... of the fire to the cold outside. While stopping, I faced for the first time the sun. He was high in the sky by now—it was half-past ten—and it suddenly came home to me that there was something relentless, inexorable, cruel, yes, something of a sneer in the pitiless way in which he looked down on the infertile waste around. Unaccountably two Greek words formed on my lips: Homer's Pontos atrygetos—the barren sea. Half an hour later I was to realize ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... advanced, or till it is examined by the fatal light of its context, that one is shewn what the ambiguous writer really was intending. A cloven foot appears at last; but it is instantly withdrawn, with a shuffle; and you experience a scowl or a sneer, as the case may be, for your extreme unkindness in inquiring whether it was not a cloven foot you saw?... Meanwhile, the learned Professor has gone off in alia omnia, with a look of earnestness which challenges respect, and a vagueness of diction which at ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... conclusion," says Our Missis with her spitefullest sneer, "give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn't bear our constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction for a single month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... well oiled, much creaking is a necessary result. There are turning-points in our public worship where congregations almost invariably betray an awkward embarrassment, simply because there is nothing to tell them whether they are expected to stand or to sit or to kneel. It is easy to sneer at such points as trifles and to make sport of those who call attention to them; but if it is worth our while to have ritual worship at all it is also worth our while to make the directions as to how people are to behave adequate, explicit, plain. A lofty contempt for ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... was at the bottom of it. Real love does not feed on ideal forms and perfect complexions. The man who marries beneath himself for only a pair of bright eyes is the prime fool of the universe—the whole world loves to sneer at him and watch his prize fade on his hands. Real love is above doubt and suspicion, but you would doubt that girl's honesty at the slightest provocation. Let another man be alone with her for a ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... completed his task, and risen from his knees, Limpy Jim advanced towards him, and said, with a sneer, "I've heard fine news about your ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too, in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience. He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to the mercy of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... a sneer; "we'll see,—we'll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he won't get ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and disgust of all right-minded persons. The press joined in the cry for remedial legislation. Ashley's speech in support of his Mines and Collieries Bill made an unusual impression in the House of Commons. Even Cobden, who had been ready to sneer at the "philanthropists" who opposed the repeal of the tax on bread, came over to the orator's side at the conclusion of his two hours' plea, and wringing his hand heartily, declared, "I don't think I have ever been put into such ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... broke into a slight sneer of incredulity. "My dear brother, you do right to say this—any man in your situation would say the same. But I know that my uncle took every pains to ascertain if the report of a ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... subject of woman voting and the financial policy of the nation. Mr. Train having been the only man to volunteer his services in Kansas and before the Convention, it is worthy of note, when the argument advanced by our chivalrous press is a sneer, a sarcasm, or an insult, that Mr. Train's defense of women voting was received by the Convention by loud and repeated applause. The following was the resolution, passed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... extraordinary and undefinable tie is that which binds souls and sympathies together—the voice, that is heard only by the ear of affection—the look, that only one can understand—the silent thrill of happiness or of anguish, communicated by a smile or by a sigh! The world may sneer at, or may condemn; yet most true it is, that they who love with the most purity and the most truth, draw nearest to that great Spirit who is the perfection ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... right," admitted she. "I suppose they aren't to blame for using their sex. I ought to be ashamed of myself, to sneer at them." ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... that Philips had imitated "every line of Strada; "that he had introduced wolves into England, and proved himself the first of gardeners by making his flowers "blow all in the same season." Or, suppose those passages unnoticed, could the broad sneer escape him, where Pope taxes the other writer (viz., himself) with having deviated" into downright poetry; "or the outrageous ridicule of Philip's style, as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, the quotation ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... [Footnote: Professor Ramsay, of Glasgow, has written a most admirable article on Cicero in Smith's Dictionary. It is very full and impartial. Cicero's own writings are the best commentary on his life. Plutarch has afforded much anecdote. Forsythe is the last work of erudition. The critics sneer at Middleton's Life of Cicero; but it has lasted one hundred years. It is, perhaps, too eulogistic. Drumann is said to have most completely exhausted his ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... door, ye little divil! There's a freezin' draught comin' in. (She does so and comes back to her chair. Carmody continues with a sneer.) It's mad I am to be thinkin' he'd go without gettin' his money—the like of a doctor! (Angrily.) Rogues and thieves they are, the lot of them, robbin' the poor like us! I've no use for their drugs at all. They only keep you sick to pay more visits. I'd not have sent ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... my good man," said another member of the Council, with a sneer, "that you have been frightened by some old woman's tales. Where could these men buy such weapons? What would they buy them with? Where would they hide them? Our armories and manufacturers are forbidden by law to sell firearms, unless under special permit, signed by ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... may advertise from now till doomsday, but they will never get a response from him! Let them rake the Susquehanna if they can! Perhaps, deep in its mud, they may find what the fishes have left of him!" she said, with a sneer. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... has an immense moustache. He has (God knows why) a serene contempt for ordinary mortals. He is always growing black with fury, and bullying weak men. On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be twisted into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and liar: he has ruined various women, and had special facilities for becoming acquainted with the rottenness of society: and occasionally he expresses, in language of the most profane, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... Grain had been to the public-house that day, and the sneer, which at other times would have been passed over with indifference, stung him—coupled as it was with a slur on his lowly position. He looked fiercely at Grime, and said, in a loud, angry tone: "It's a matter ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... e'er death first may reap Here in a Father's arms shall quiet sleep, The tender flowers shall grow above his head And drink the dews that fall upon his bed. The silent grave is safe from foolish sneer And persecutor's rage ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... touch the lyre, and others urge the dance: On every head the rosy garland glows, In every hand the golden goblet flows. The Syren views them with exulting eyes, And laughs at bashful Virtue as she flies. 50 But see behind, where Scorn and Want appear, The grave remonstrance and the witty sneer; See fell Remorse in action, prompt to dart Her snaky poison through the conscious heart; And Sloth to cancel, with oblivious shame, The fair memorial ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... that sailor. He left the savour of Probity and Simplicity behind, though he took the things themselves away again. Why, why couldn't he leave us what is more wanted here than even his money? His integrity: the pearl of price, that my father, whom I used to sneer at, carried to his grave; and died simple, but wise; honest, but rich—rich in money, in credit, in honour, and eternal hopes. Oh, Skinner! Skinner! I wish I had never ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... don't do it Which was which? Woman a eulogy of the fair sex Woodrow Wilson Wouldn't read that book again without a salary. Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is. You must never ask for wages You sneer, you ships that pass me by Young ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger

... incidentally to observe, that education was requisite to promote the interests of religion. But Miss Mally, on that occasion, jocularly maintained, that education had only a tendency to promote the sale of books. This, Mr. Dalgliesh thought, was a sneer at himself, he having some time before unfortunately published a short tract, entitled, "The moral union of our temporal and eternal interests considered, with respect to the establishment of parochial seminaries," and which fell still-born ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... rubbish, all you can produce—you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent master and poet! You can DO. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and measure, and doubt, and carp. Look at the lion. Did you ever see such a gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring brute? Look at him eating lumps of raw meat—positively bleeding, and raw and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... do!" retorted the official with a sneer, "and 'tis a mighty clever one, I'll allow. Celine Dumont, ma foi! Not badly imagined, ma petite mere: and all would have passed off splendidly; unfortunately, Celine Dumont, servitor to Citizeness Desiree Candeille, passed through ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... grave disadvantage. Upon that side, from the house-wall to the fence, I have forty-five feet, on the east fifty feet, on the south sixty feet, on the west a mere ruelle. Almost every one who works out these figures will laugh, and the remainder sneer. Here's a garden to write about! That area might do for a tennis-court or for a general meeting of Mr. Frederic Harrison's persuasion. You might kennel a pack of hounds there, or beat a carpet, or assemble those members of the cultured class who admire Mr. Gladstone. But grow flowers—roses—to ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... all others to argue down the declaimers of old-fashioned sentimentalities,—love of country, care for its position among nations, zeal for its honour, pride in its renown. (Oh, if you could hear him philosophically and logically sneer away the word "prestige"!) Such notions are fast being classified as "bosh." And when that classification is complete,—when England has no colonies to defend, no navy to pay for, no interest in the affairs ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. They are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the law of the strongest. The Bechuanas could never understand the changes ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... fro on the shore, a black group forms and moves away. She is saved! It was a sand-hauler who fished her out. Policemen are carrying her, surrounded by boatmen and lightermen, and in the darkness a hoarse voice is heard saying with a sneer: "That water-hen gave me a lot of trouble. You ought to see how she slipped through my fingers! I believe she wanted to make me lose my reward." Gradually the tumult subsides, the bystanders disperse, and the black group ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... tear will Caledonia shed? Her ancient foe, illustrious Johnson's dead; Mac-Ossian's sons may now securely rest, Safe from the bitter sneer, the cynick jest.[21] The song of triumph now I seem to hear, And these the sounds that vibrate on my ear: "Low lies the man, who scarce deigns Gray to praise, But from the tomb calls Blackmore's sleeping lays; A passport grants to Pomfret's dismal ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay

... wink towards her sisters; and a sneer on her hideous mouth, she journeyed towards the gate, and five times was she brought back to the starting-place, to be fastened at last by a strong lead to the bridle of her more submissive sister, who was making disgusting masticatory ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... now," Jeb said, with something like a sneer at Tim's assurance. "Why, everybody says they're the finest fighters ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... said I was loading unnecessary stuff on the wagon. I told him that I would need all the bacon and the tobacco, and perhaps several head of sheep to make my treaties with the Indians when I took my sheep through their reservations. Now this little speech brought a sneer to the face of my venerable partner. "No use of making treaties with the Indians; you get a military escort without paying anything out." I told him no military escort would need to travel ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... man had an insolent smile in those prominent eyes of his, and a sneer bared his tobacco-stained teeth. Slamming the door, he came sauntering toward the scoutmaster, who had risen; he halted without speaking, then deliberately, impudently, he stared Mr. Perkins ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... reference was anything but clear, replied rather vaguely that he didn't know as he was, very. Albert's temper flared up again. His grandfather was sneering at him once more; he was always sneering at him. All right, let him sneer—now. Some day he would be shown. He scowled and turned away. And Captain Zelotes, noticing the scowl, was reminded of a scowl he had seen upon the face of a Spanish opera singer some twenty years before. He did not like to be reminded ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every thing; and fools only, as Horace has it, run into one vice in trying to avoid another. Let not the reader, from these remarks, suppose that their author is a morose censurer of the times; or that the least sneer is intended against that idol of all orthodoxy "things as they are." As a general proposition, nothing can be more true, than that whatever is established, even in the world of fashion, is, for the time being, wisest, discreetest, best; and, woe betide the man that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... orphan!' What nobler motive could there be for publishing a book, than the prevailing one so simply given by Mrs. Fremont in the lines just quoted! Truly the most determined hater of the so much read and so much abused 'women's books,' must cease to sneer in acknowledging that here indeed was inducement sufficient to make the most timid and shrinking of the sex face the frowns of the critic, the scoff of the antagonistic politician, and the astonishment of the fashionable world that one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the rail, buried deep in thought, Billy Byrne passed close behind her. At sight of her a sneer curled his lip. How he hated her! Not that she ever had done aught to harm him, but rather because she represented to him in concrete form all that he had learned to hate and loathe ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... now don't think hard of me, but do thee tell me, what prank art thee upon here?—where dids't thee get those foin clothes?"—To this our adventurer gave no answer but a look of haughty resentment, putting his arms akimbo, elevating his head and neck, and finishing with a contemptuous sneer of the right barn-buskin kind. "Nay, now," said the other, "I am sure of it. Yes, Jack Meadowcroft thee hast left thy honest parents, and mixed with the strolling fellers—the play actors,—a pize upon them, with their tricks, making honest folks laugh ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... of them come here; you alone had not done so," answered Porphyrius, with an almost imperceptible sneer. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... Skinner had told him, and found he had made another false move. He tried again: "Nor to the Dodds?" with an incredulous sneer. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... is the usual way of reviewers. Tales that fascinated Scott, Fox, and Sheridan, "which possess charms for the learned and unlearned, the grave and gay, the gentleman and clown," do not deserve to be dismissed with a sneer by people who have never read them. Following Horace Walpole in some degree, Mrs. Radcliffe paved the way for Scott, Byron, Maturin, Lewis, and Charlotte Bronte, just as Miss Burney filled the gap between Smollett and Miss Austen. Mrs. Radcliffe, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... Fetyukovitch, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... heart to anybody?" she asked peevishly. "And you needn't sneer. He's done lots else besides just seeing animals. Once he steered a ship in the South Seas for two days and two nights when the crew were down with the New Guinea fever. And another time he was working at a mine in Andalusia. The miners went ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... for treating it in what may appear to be disproportionate detail. From it dates the first clear realisation even by hostile critics in England, and probably by Ministers themselves, that the policy of Ulster as laid down at Craigavon could not be dismissed with a sneer, although it is true that there were many Home Rulers who never openly abandoned the pretence that it could. Not less important was the effect in Ulster itself. The Unionist Council had proved itself in earnest; it could, and was prepared to, do more ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... to enjoy herself, but I perhaps did not appreciate her sensitiveness and the fact that only a few days ago she parted with the friends with whom she has lived all her life. Now, sir," he added, with a sneer upon his coarse lips, "I have been compelled to answer your questions to avoid a disturbance in a public place; but I promise you that if you do not make yourself scarce in thirty seconds I ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... afraid, don't go," answered Raymond, with a sneer. "I thought you were a chap who didn't care for anything. Will you ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... much mottled and disturbed in hue during Bet's speech. When she spoke of Will being free, his lips took an ugly sneer, and he found extreme difficulty in restraining himself. He was well aware, however, that if he disclosed the fact of his own treachery his last hope of winning this proud lass was over. After all, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... the sum total of all good below? Shall we, then, cease for innate worth to scan? Look to the new made coat and not the man? Those who are raised in such an atmosphere Are they who have the ever-ready sneer At honest poverty, and at the road To competence which their own fathers trod If men of worth will stoop among the vain, We turn from them with sorrow and with pain Man may repent, reform, his steps retrace, ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... I've been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with a sneer. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... "Your apology is ample, Sieur Deschenaux. I am satisfied you meant no affront to my sister! It is my weak point, messieurs," continued he, looking firmly at the company, ready to break out had he detected the shadow of a sneer upon any one's countenance. "I honor her as I do the queen of heaven. Neither of their names ought to be ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... still subject to the laws of our element; and you know you must execute sentence of death upon him as soon as he marries again, and breaks faith with you."—"To this hour he is a widower," said Undine, "and loves and mourns me truly."—"Ah, but he will be bridegroom soon," said Kuehleborn with a sneer; "wait a couple of days only; and the marriage blessing will have been given, and you must go up and put the criminal to death."—"I cannot!" answered the smiling Undine. "I have had the fountain sealed up, against myself and my whole ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... fortress marches in review before the Prince. If you should happen to be on the avenue near the Castle gate at twelve o'clock, you will see the beauty and chivalry of Graustark. The soldiers are not the only ones who are on parade." There was an unmistakable sneer in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... less cause for annoyance if she had had a little more severity," said Mrs. Rainham with an unspoken sneer at poor Aunt Margaret. "You had better advise her to do her best in return for the very comfortable home we give her." With which Bob had to endeavour to be content, for the present. He went off to find ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... to keep them too," answered the young fellow, his sneer in no ways abated I became afraid that his carefully curbed tongue would not give us our opening before we parted, and was inclined to force his hand; but M'Iver came in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, the smiling face of Mr Carker the Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes, it changed back, no less quickly, to its old expression, and showed him every gum of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Emery, with an undisguised sneer; "it's Merriwell and his trainers. They are putting him in condition to beat the field in that ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... to you for thinking so much about my comfort," he said in a voice into which he hoped he had insinuated a sneer. "But I'm bound to say you're awful suspicious folk about here. You needn't be feared for your old policies. There's plenty of nice walks about the roads, and I want ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... be famous than pleasant, I'd rather be rude than polite; It's easy to sneer When you're witty and queer, And I'd rather be Clever ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... backing out again; but a sneer from Richard silenced him, and he obeyed the order. While he was doing so, Richard walked round the barn to satisfy himself that no one was near. They were alone, and the ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... were few signs of life about the place. Only at the gate was the slouching figure of Jerome Conners, the overseer, who, waving his hat at the column, recognized Chad, as he rode by, and spoke to him, Chad thought, with a covert sneer. Farther ahead, and on the farthest boundary of the Buford farm, was a Federal fort, now deserted, and the beautiful woodland that had once stood in perfect beauty around it was sadly ravaged and nearly gone, as was the Dean woodland ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... you include George William Reynolds?" inquired Gouger, with a sneer. "Neither of them wrote until they were depraved by contract with humanity. If we could get a young man of true literary talent to see life and write of it as he went along, what might we not secure? But I have no more time to spare, Mr. Roseleaf. ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... magnificent person?" he asked Jolly Robin with a sneer. "Do let me see him! And if he wants to fight, I'll soon spoil his finery for him. He won't look so elegant after I've ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey

... 15) we have the old sneer at the three insatiables, Hell, Earth and the Parts feminine (os vulvae); and Rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts, producing a truly hideous caricature. A Hadis attributed to Mohammed runs, "They (women) lack wits and faith. When Eve was created Satan rejoiced saying:—Thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... "Don't sneer. Maybe the Naturalists are right. Maybe we ought to cut out all this phoney progress and phoney peace that passeth all understanding. I'm no liberal, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I think the Naturalists have the ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... it then; only don't ask questions another time if you mean to turn round and sneer when a fellow tries to explain. I suppose you won't believe either that giants ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Essayist, and now and then writing in verse. He liked the freedom of the platform. "I preach in the Lecture-room," he says, "and there it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep, reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius." In England, he says, "I find this lecturing a key which opens all doors." But he did not tend to overvalue the calling which from "base necessity" he followed so diligently. "Incorrigible spouting Yankee," ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... were instrumental in preventing the accomplishment of their dearest wishes. Here the Hungarian is eminently patriotic: he endeavors as much as possible to forget that he and his are bound to the empire of Austria, and he speaks of the German and the Slav who are his fellow-subjects with a sneer. The people whom one encounters in that corner of Hungary profess a dense ignorance of the German language, but if pressed can speak it glibly enough. I won an angry frown and an unpleasant remark from an innkeeper because ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... position! Why shouldn't I be happy through my little day too? Let the parish sneer at my repulses, let it. I'll get her, if I move heaven and earth to ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... exclaim, as I entered the room, shrugging his shoulders with such a contemptuously good-natured sneer as only a Frenchman can manufacture; and raising both his hands derisively, he went off with vivacity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... reality, though there are very marked differences between the two commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee, yet they resemble one another more closely, in blood and manners, than either does any other American State; and both have too just cause for pride to make it necessary for either to sneer at the other, or indeed at any State of our mighty Federal Union. In their origin they were precisely alike; but whereas the original pioneers, the hunters and Indian fighters, kept possession of Tennessee as long as they lived,—Jackson, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... came the night rattle of hostile London. Staring down, he studied the desolate circle of light a street-lamp cast on the wet pavement. A cat gray as dish-water, its fur worn off in spots, lean and horrible, sneaked through the circle of light like the spirit of unhappiness, like London's sneer at solitary ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... of reflecting every mood, every feeling; all pathos, joy, sorrow—the good and the evil too—all there is in life, all that one has lived." (This recalls a recently published remark of J. S. Van Cleve: "The piano can sing, march, dance, sparkle, thunder, weep, sneer, question, assert, complain, whisper, hint; in one word it is the most ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... passes. Space and time consume beauty, youth, love, glory, genius. Human life is nothing; death is no better. Worlds are born and die like ourselves. All is nothing. Yes, yes, yes! All is nothing.... To love or hate, enjoy or suffer, admire or sneer, live or die—what does it matter? There is nothing in greatness or littleness, beauty or ugliness. Eternity is indifferent; indifference ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... odious drinking-shops—something in the very atmosphere of the place seems to induce selfishness, and a drinker who goes wrong is never pitied; when evil days come, the smart landlord shuns the failure, the barmaids sneer at him, and his boon companions shrink away as though the doomed man were tainted. Monstrous it is to hear the remarks made about a lost soul who is plunging with accelerated speed down the steep road to ruin. His companions compare notes about him, and all his bodily symptoms ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... I must take notice; it is a little indirect sneer at our crowd of authoresses. My choosing to send this to you, is a proof that I think you an author, that is, a classic. But, in truth, I am nauseated by the Madams Piozzi, &c., and the host of novel-writers ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... "Am I to repeat a command to you? Do you ignore the word of your mistress?" There was a significant sneer in ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon



Words linked to "Sneer" :   express, sneerer, contempt, show, evince, leer, scorn, smile



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