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Flout   Listen
verb
Flout  v. t.  (past & past part. flouted; pres. part. flouting)  To mock or insult; to treat with contempt. "Phillida flouts me." "Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue sky."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books



... thunderclouds outlightening, thrilling the air. With shattering trumpet-challenge, when the blasts Are locked in frenzied wrestle, with mad breath Rending the clouds, when Zeus is wroth with men Who travail with iniquity, and flout His law. So grappled they, as spear with spear Clashed, shield with shield, and man on ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... shapes, appear'd. I have not seen a dapper Jack so brisk: He wears a short Italian hooded cloak, Larded with pearl, and in his Tuscan cap A jewel of more value than the crown. While others walk below, the king and he, From out a window, laugh at such as we, And flout our train, and jest at our attire. Uncle, 'tis this that makes me impatient. E. Mor. But, nephew, now you see the king is chang'd. Y. Mor. Then so I am, and live to do him service: But, whiles I have a sword, a hand, a heart, I will not yield to any such upstart. You know ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... worn on head! * Though a stranger among you fro' home I fled: Make use of wine in my company * And flout at Time who in languish sped. E'en so cloth camphor my hue attest, * O my lords, as I stand in my present stead. So gar me your gladness when dawneth day, * And to highmost seat in your homes be I led: And quaff your cups ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have a scuffle; and when the barrator had disappeared he turned his talons upon his companion, and grappled with him above the ditch. But the other was ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... hast lured me here, To be thine haughty paramour's meek slave. Freeborn am I, yet see! mine arms are chained!— Through the long, troubled nights, upon my couch I lie and weep; each morn, as the bright sun Returns, I curse my gray hairs and my weight Of years. All scorn me, flout me. All I had Is gone, save heavy heart and scalding tears.— Nay, I will speak, and thou shalt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... have pressed it openly and been repulsed," she replied in a low voice. "But if he could have carried me to some far fortress, how should I flout him there, that is, if I still lived? There, with no price to pay in gold or lands or power, he would have been my master, and I should have been his slave till such time as he wearied of me. That is the fate from which ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... That seemed to jostle bodily, Like children full of play designs That spring at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... and deep we lie, and if I gave him place, My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face; They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host, And—I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost." The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame, And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... you tell me first who was the father of Lagus." This was a jeer at the obscure birth of the king, and all his courtiers were indignant at it as an unpardonable liberty; but Ptolemy said, "If it is not kingly to take a flout, neither is it kingly to give one." And Alexander was more savage than usual in his behaviour to Callisthenes and Clitus. So Porus, when he was taken captive, begged Alexander to use him as a king. And on his inquiring, "What, nothing more?" he replied "No. For ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... knew, though I was then but a lad, that she would never give over fretting herself at the thought that I was to be lord of all the broad acres and wide moors of Beechcot, and that Jasper would be but a landless man. And so, though she never dare flout or oppress me in any way, for fear of Sir Thurstan's displeasure, she, without being openly unfavorable, wasted no love on me, and no doubt often wished me out ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... were an appendage of the Vicarage. A cottage built there would have been offensive; but a staring brick Methodist chapel, with the word Salem inserted in large letters over the door, would, as he was aware, flout him every time he left or entered his garden. He had always been specially careful to avoid any semblance of a quarrel with the Methodist minister, and had in every way shown his willingness to regard Mr. Puddleham's flock as being equal to his own in the general gifts ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... there is a Charm about The quiet State of Golf, tho' fools may flout, That with its magic has unlock'd the Door Of Happiness ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton

... his nature he was wholly unpartisan, and full of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world, although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as fools in the main. Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to the realists, whom our generation affects. Both writers stimulate the longing for something better. Their creed was short: "Love God and honor the King." It is a very ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the horizon rose the cloud of strife, Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize: Which swarming host should mould a nation's life; Which royal banner flout the western skies. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... sheep he proved a fair wonder same as he done with everything else. And nothing was a trouble. For a fortnight the man never slept, save a nod now and again in the house on wheels, where he dwelt in the valley among the ewes. And old shepherds, with all the will to flout him, was tongue-tied afore the man, because of his ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... go very hard with him if he attempts to flout the King's authority. And though he should dare attempt it, be sure that his own officers will not dare to do ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... landlords flout "Fixed Duty," for 'tis plain With them the Anti-Corn-Law Bill Must go ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... words my son, come easily, when he That speaks is wise, and speaks but for the right. Else come they never! Swift are thine, and bright As though with thought, yet have no thought at all Lo this new God, whom thou dost flout withal, I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He In Hellas shall be great! Two spirits there be, Young Prince, that in man's world are first of worth. Demeter one is named; she is the Earth— Call her which name thou will!—who ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... and its brooding solitude with religious veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep—the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels. The friar determined to abandon this recalcitrant, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... you flout this 'gold materialism,' For what you call the 'gold of evening skies:' But let me tell you, boy, for you 'tis well My lands are broad and bankers true, or else Your maiden, she, poor girl, I often think, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... ejaculated the old man, raising protesting hands up toward the very distant, quite invisible sky. "How could I, a humble priest of the Lord, range myself with those who would flout and defy Him." ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... attendance at crowded dinners, and their vulgar obsequiousness at table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they can not carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the philosophy which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... Whigs whose name you flout, Slip of the tree you fain would fell; Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt, Your plan, George Russell, likes them well, "What will regain," you heard them cry, "That popular praise we once enjoyed?" And instant ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure. If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the same as ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... often confidentially consulted the Warden when a cousin had blundered into the hands of the police, embarrassing that flustered official with torrents of half intelligible speech, the purport of which generally was to flout the proceedings with evidence of indubitable alibi? All this he translated to his countrymen as proof of personal influence with court authorities, and, what was more to the point, made ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... masters blithely followed to the wars. Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy, Gascony, and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At home they were vexatious neighbours to a town of burghers claiming privileges: nor was it unreasonable that the Earl should flout the pretensions of the town to read things for themselves, documents, titleships, rights, and the rest. As well might the flat plain boast of seeing as far as the pillar. Earl and town fought the fight of Barons and Commons in epitome. The Earl gave way; the Barons gave way. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Urquhart when they met, and himself opened the topic of the Norwegian jaunt. Urquhart took up the ball. "I think you might come. Your wife and boy will love it, and you'll kindle at their joy. 'They for life only, you for life in them,' to flout the bard. Besides, you are not a fogey, if I'm not. I believe our ages tally. You shall climb mountains with me, Macartney, and improve the muscles of your calves. You don't fish, I think. Nor do ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... Bulgarians have often shown an obstinate tendency to go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on the watch ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... no man flout, The wisest Kings have all some folly; Nor let his piety any doubt; Charles, like a Sov'reign, wise and holy, Makes young men judges of the bench, And bishops, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... a sharp, businesslike precision about the American soldier that stood San Francisco in good stead. The San Francisco water rat thug and "Barbary Coast" pirate might flout a policeman, but he discovered that he could not disobey a man who wears Uncle Sam's uniform without imminent risk of being counted in that abstract mortuary list ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... wife, why dost thou flout? Now is now, and then was then: Seek now all the world throughout, Thou ken'st not clowns from gentlemen. They are clad in black, green, yellow, or gray, So far above their own degree: Once in my life I'll do as they, For I'll have a ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... pragmatists do vainly talk. It is a divinely ordered system, which includes man, the roof and crown of things, and Christ, in whom is revealed to us its inner character and meaning. It is not the province of faith either to flout scientific knowledge, or to contaminate the material on which science works by intercalating what M. Le Roy calls 'transhistorical symbols'—myths in fact—which do not become true by being recognised as false, as the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... ancient song Was wont to flout her swain, I prithee be not always coy, But turn your face again. My heart is true, and it will rue, That ever you should doubt me, So sweet, be kind, and change your mind, And don't for ever ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... her surprise. Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Her wits were alert, sharpened by the hideous necessity of placating this amazing creature she dared not openly flout. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... you. 'Tis not till the ape hath mounted the tree that she, shows her tail so plain. Nay, there sits the servant; God help him! And while so it is, fear not thou his kin will ever be so poor in spirit as come where the likes of you can flout their dole." And casting one look of mute reproach at her cousin for being so little of a man as to sit passive and silent all this time, she turned and went haughtily out; nor would she shed a single tear till she got home and thought ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... lover more'n five-an'-thirty years agone. Who? That 'ooman's wedded man, Seth Bolverson. We warn't married"—this with a short laugh. "Wife or less than wife, he found me to his mind. She—she that egged you on to come an' flout me—was a pale-haired girl o' seventeen or so i' those times—a church-goin' mincin' strip of a girl—the sort you men-folk bow the knee to for saints. Her father owned Sheba Farm, an' she look'd across on my man, an' had envy on 'en, an' set her eyes to draw 'en. Oh, a saint she ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive, he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses; flout him, and you perish. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... dost thou need a friend about thee To cheer and comfort when she flout thee. So, an thou wilt a-wooing wend, I'll follow thee like trusty friend. In love or fight thou shalt not lack A sturdy arm to 'fend thy back. I'll follow thee in light or dark, Through good or ill—Saints ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... the Yarmouth herring-mongers "for ready gold, so that it amounteth to a great sum of money, which money doth never come again into England." "We are daily scorned," he says, "by these Hollanders, for being so negligent of our Profit, and careless of our Fishing; and they do daily flout us that be the poor Fishermen of England, to our Faces at Sea, calling to us, and saying, 'Ya English, ya sall or oud scoue dragien;' which, in English, is this, 'You English, we will make you glad to ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the passion which ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... breast heaving, and her eyes overflowing with tears, in bounded his sister, Seraphine Duchatel, exclaiming: "And is this the creature that has stood between me and Claude? and brought here, too, to flout me to my face! I'll not endure it;" and she burst into ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic spread,— ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... we have wiped out the solstice. We holiday makers are not going to be tyrannized over by literary and scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... he, "you do ill to mock me thus! Surely it suffices that you have done me so great wrong already, and that you hold me, your lawful Lord, here a prisoner and in chains! Ye know well, as I cannot doubt, that you are doing an evil and a wicked thing, so I pray you go your way, and cease to flout me." "Good my Lord Argon," said Boga, "be assured we are not mocking you, but are speaking in sober earnest, and we will swear it on our Law." Then all the Barons swore fealty to him as their Lord, and Argon too swore that he would ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... considerations gave way before it. Her heart thrilled with a sickly sentiment at all times. To her men were the gods of the universe, and, as such, must be propitiated, at least in theory. In practice it might be necessary to flout them, to tease them, even to snub them—on rare occasions. But this would only come after intimacy had been established. After that her attitude would be governed by circumstances, and even then her snubs, her floutings, her teasing, would only be done as a further ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... experience, if indeed These banded hosts are moving against Thebes. That city thou canst never storm, but first Shall fall, thou and thy brother, blood-imbrued. Such curse I lately launched against you twain, Such curse I now invoke to fight for me, That ye may learn to honor those who bear thee Nor flout a sightless father who begat Degenerate sons—these maidens did not so. Therefore my curse is stronger than thy "throne," Thy "suppliance," if by right of laws eterne Primeval Justice sits enthroned with Zeus. Begone, abhorred, disowned, no son of mine, Thou ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... Catherine Crewe Is now seventy-two, And avers she hath half forgotten The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it, And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it, "POOH! THE MERMAN ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... scorn her and scout her, But true to her colours are WE, The learned may mock her and flout her, But surely we'll rally about her, In the College ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... "Ye flout me! Ye who will have for a husband, one whom thou canst not name!" She laughed derisively. That hurt Elsa very much because it was true. Ortrud had remained with her through the night, and had continued ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... that you advised me to flout the law; to do just the things I have been doing, roving the world, shooting and plundering! There's a policeman at the other end of the platform; call him and turn ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... had struck a Fibre; which about It clings my Being—let the Sufi flout; Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key, That shall unlock the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... he kept it there because it was his sincere conviction that it belonged there, ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will. Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command. He did not scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed a conviction of the sovereign right of the people to rule for that. But he did not wait pusillanimously for the popular mind to make itself up; he had too high a conception of the duty of leadership ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... speech but nowise slack in deed, Actor, his brother of whom last I spake, Who will not let a tongue without an arm Within our gates rave to our overthrow, Nor entrance give the foe, who on his shield To flout us bears the hated effigy. His Sphynx, midst rattling darts, will hardly thank Him that advanced her to our battlements.— Heaven grant that as I say the event ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... all Cithaeron but shall then Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found With what a hymeneal thou wast borne Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale! Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not Shall set thyself and children in one line. Flout then both Creon and my words, for none Of mortals shall be striken worse ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... by every lip. Perhaps she, like many others, had misread the essay 'Of Love,' and felt herself bound in honor to bring the philosopher to his knees at her feet. It is credible that from the outset of their sentimental intercourse, she intended to win and then to flout him. But coquetry cannot conquer the first laws of human feeling. To be a good flirt, a woman must have nerve and a sympathetic nature; and doubtless the flirt in this instance paid for her triumph with the smart of a lasting wound. Is it fanciful to argue that her subsequent ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... shouted, thumping the table with his fist: "You are the limit!... The take-the-cake limit!... You flout me! You practise on my credulity!... Now you would steal a march on me! Try it on—will you?... Ah! You are not Corporal Vinson!... No?... You are a journalist!... You have got to prove that!... Even if you do prove it, you have got yourself ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... himself and all who aid and abet him. Let him remember, lastly, that this high-born lady to whom he, an unknown and vagrant Gentile, dares to talk as equal to equal, has from childhood been my affianced, who will shortly be my wife, although it may please her to seem to flout me after the fashion of maidens, and that we Abati are jealous of the honour of our women. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... huntsman is known as Harlequin or Henequin, and in some parts of Brittany he is "Herod in pursuit of the Holy Innocents." (Alas, that no such Herod visits London! How welcome would he be, were he only to flout a few of the brawling brats who, allowed to go anywhere they please, make an inferno of every road they choose ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... Tory landlords flout "Fix'd Duty," for 'tis plain, With them the Anti-Corn-Law Bill Must go against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... made some purchases of bric-a-brac for his house in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of the poor, and learn how they may flout the proud marquis,' cried Lady Alicia gleefully; 'the poorest man in England may walk along this private road on Sunday to the church, and the proud marquis is powerless to prevent him. Of course, if ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... of song (that never cloys, Altho' the winds be redolent of praise.) Wakes not in man that stupor of amaze, Bird, beast, and plant, in universal choir, Pay to Almighty in a thousand ways, That sterner reason's votaries would flout, Giving their tardy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... brewers of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change in excise ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... steel and gold, And plumes that flout the sky, I 'll wear a soul of hardier mould, And thoughts that sweep as high. For scarf athwart my corslet cast, With her fair name y-wove; I 'll have her pictured in my breast, The ladye ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... is the lure of all Egypt, and he who hath been transplanted to her would flout the favor of the gods, did he make homesick moan ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good, but to gather them a paine to me, though gain to thee. I, but for all that I must not scape without some new flout: now would I were by thee to give thee another, and surely I would give thee bread for cake. Farewell if thou meane well; els fare as ill, as thou ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... I was poor, and was felt as burdensome by those connections whom a dread of public opinion, rather than a sense of duty and affection, persuaded to take me to their homes. Here, then, when little more than three years old, I found myself—a lonely brat, whom servants might flout at pleasure, and whom superiors only regarded with a frown. I was just old enough to remember that I had once experienced very different treatment. I had felt the caresses of a fond mother—I had ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... got 'em cheap!" said Tim, red in his fury. "You'll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... conspicuous charms. In fact, she had lived up to them pretty furiously, until time began to take a ruthless toll of her contrasting points. From the concert-platform she still seemed to discount, almost to flout, the years, but in secret she yielded ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... the men who must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to spend, and more of luxury than ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... voice of this queer, kindly, satiric personality. London generally falls into the arms of those who flout her; and Mariette, with his militant Catholicism, and his contempt for our governing ideals, became the fashion. As for Anderson, the contact with English Ministers and men of affairs had but carried on the generous ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that very reason his son would fain avenge him," said Hubert flippantly, "and flout the ghosts, if such things there be. And if men—Frenchmen or the like—see fit to attire themselves in masquerade, no coward fear will blunt the edge ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... Vanderschoffeldt flout, And swear and rave for sour krout; Nay kick his frow with solemn phiz, To make her feel how goot it ish. Yet after he has gorg'd his maw With puttermilks and goot olt slaw, Let him remember times are such, The French have ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... never heard Thalberg, have the impertinence to flout him, to make merry at his fantasias. Just compare the Don Juan of Liszt and the Don Juan of Thalberg! See which is the more musical, the more pianistic. Liszt, after running through the gamut of operatic extravagance, began to paraphrase movements from Beethoven symphonies, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... porphyry, that are there, and the tombs and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his company came riding on to the piazza of Santa Reparata, and seeing him among the tombs, said:—"Go we and flout him." So they set spurs to their horses, and making a mock onset, were upon him almost before he saw them. Whereupon:—"Guido," they began, "thou wilt be none of our company; but, lo now, when thou hast proved that God does not exist, what wilt thou have achieved?" ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... course," he said, after a pause. "Human nature is weak, engagingly weak, Guildea. And you're inclined to flout it. I could understand a certain class of lady—the lion-hunting, the intellectual lady, seeking you. Your reputation, your ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... to give your affection to one who is both plain and elderly—one who is not suffering from a surfeit of love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women," says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the giver; whereas old ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... time a grimy sweep Was creeping down the street, When Quartern Loaf, the biker's boy, Below he chanced to meet: "Sweep!" sneered the baker: and the sweep Gave Puff a sooty flout; But Puff-crumb did not deal in soot, So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will not do for me to fight "With such a sooty elf; "My jacket's ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... "the pilgrims did find no answer to the riddle, and the Clerk of Oxenford thought that the Prioress had been deceived in the matter thereof; whereupon the lady was sore vexed, though the gentle knight did flout and gibe at the poor clerk because of his lack of understanding over other of the riddles, which did fill him with shame and make ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... renewed more than once, but with no different result, and upon the same lines. Mrs. Willoughby received his attacks with a patient humility, and rushed out to catch him a flout as he was retiring. Finally, however, she shifted her position, and became the aggressor. She suggested that Fielding was really in love with Clarice, and trying to gain favour with her by bringing an admirer back to her feet. Fielding was furious at the suggestion, and indignantly repudiated ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... if any one do her disdain, Her father is ready with might and with main To prove she is come of noble degree, Therefore let none flout ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... habits and are not the only ones which you must break. Remember that a new order of things is beginning for you. Hitherto I have praised your frivolity, because it was opportune and in keeping with the rest of your nature. I thought it feminine for you to play with Fortune, to flout caution, to destroy whole masses of your life and environment. Now, however, there is something that you must always bear in mind, and regard above everything else. You must gradually train yourself—in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... circle - they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching By-and-by! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... one thing for a man to assert his own independence, and to show his bride at the outset on whose feet the highest-heeled boots would be, but quite another to flout the customs of the countryside ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout Groan in the ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... decency to a barnyard brood! I dusted my fingers free from the soil of him. "I will marry her to you, if only to see her flout you," I promised vengefully. "Now to the canoes, and have your paddles ready." I had no smile for him, though he sought it, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... advanced Whigs were already beginning to be called, did not conceal their lack of respect for the Upper House, and used revolutionary threats against it as a relic of mediaevalism which should no longer be tolerated in a free state. But the time had passed when the peers could flout an aroused nation. When the Third Reform Bill was ready for passage, the ministers secured the King's promise to frustrate the opposition of the Lords by filling up the House with new peers created expressly to vote for reform. The threat sufficed. Wellington and the most stern ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... you frankly that to be thwarted by petulance annoys me. It happens that time is of the utmost importance until we are much farther from Pfalz. If you think that the ownership of wealth and a castle gives you the right to flout a plain, ordinary man, you take a mistaken view of things. I care nothing for your castle, or for your wealth. You may be a lady of title for aught I know, but even that does not impress me. We must not stand here like two quarrelsome children. I will conduct you ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... then, is what he meant—that insolent one! 'After the fiesta will I send the answer'—so he told that simpering maid who took my letter and the rose. And the answer, then, is my rose and my letter returned, and no word else. Madre de Dios! That he should flout me thus! Now will I tell Jose to kill him—and kill him quickly. For that blue-eyed gringo I hate!" Then she flung herself across her ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... he, "there is something in your attitude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this woman yonder ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... possessed the Vote— Are things on which the swains all dote. Fearing to flout or slight. She dances, having now her way, No bygone Easter holiday E'er saw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various

... almost inevitable result of possessing wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate should thus openly flout ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... these statesmen raised their respective countries from depths of humiliation to undreamt of heights of triumph. The first thing was to restore the prestige of their States. No people can be strong in action that has lost belief in its own powers and has allowed its neighbours openly to flout it. The history of the world has shown again and again that politicians who allow their country to be regarded as une quantite negligeable bequeath to some abler successor a heritage of struggle and war—struggle for the nation to recover its self-respect, and war to regain consideration and fair ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... marry 'most any girl you wanted me to. But if Columbine were to flout me as she used to—why, I'd buck sure enough.... Dad, are you sure she knows nothing, suspects nothing of where you—you ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... evil scheme unfolded itself before his consciousness. He saw the cunning of the intrigue which the initial outburst of his wrath had obscured. There was more involved in his decision than his own inclinations. He was not free simply to flout the legacy and toss it angrily aside. Ellen, a Richelieu to the last, had him in a trap that wrenched and wrecked every sensibility of his nature. The more he thought about the matter, the more chaotic his impulses became. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... heeded not their words, but would frown and flout, and go back to his companions, and lead them. And his companions followed him, for he was fair, and fleet of foot, and could dance, and pipe, and make music. And wherever the Star-Child led them they ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... the benefit of courtiers and ladies, to whom his work is principally addressed, translations of their names; several of which would require to be retranslated for the benefit of the modern reader, as for example the three following, all figures of derision:—"The fleering frump;"—"The broad flout;"—"The privy nip." At the present day, however, the work of Puttenham is most of all to be valued for the remarks on language and on manners, and the contemporary anecdotes with which it abounds, and of which some examples ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... The district of Venaissin, still belonging at that time to the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him; he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost sight of; none ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... this obstinacy. It was unheard of—absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals—that one of his children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with such an ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... themselves in the same obstinate belief of the same 'cunningly devised' frauds; and though they had many accomplices in their singular conspiracy, had the equally singular fortune to free themselves and their coadjutors flout all transient weakness towards their cause and treachery towards one another; and, lastly, that these men, having, amidst all their ignorance, originality enough to invent the most pure and sublime system of morality which the world has ever listened to, had, amidst all their conscious ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... who have fled, man! And gentles and ladies Located in Hades, Through his miraculous mediation, Declare how they feel, And such things reveal As suits their genius for impartation. 'Tis not with any irreverent spirit I give the tale, or flout it, or jeer it; For many good folk Not subject to joke Declare for the fact that they both see and hear it. It comes from New York, though, And it might be hard work, though, To bring belief to ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... come near thee if he didn't," answered Dickon. "Birds is rare choosers an' a robin can flout a body worse than a man. See, he's making up to thee now. 'Cannot tha' see a chap?' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... retired. But such their confidence; their talk so loud And free, I could not help but hear some words That raised suspicion; then I listened close And heard, 'mid gibe and jest, the enterprise That was to flout us; make the Loyalist A cringing slave to sneering rebels; make The British lion gnash his teeth with rage;— The Yankee, hand-on-hip, guffawing loud The while. At once, my British blood was up, Nor had I borne their ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... me rouse your phlegmatic blood, my Britons; sit down, with your thumbs in your mouths, my masters, and allow a coterie to flout you at will, whilst the Frenchmen, the Germans, the Russians alternately laugh at and pity you. Pity you, the sons of the men who chased their fathers half over Europe at the point of the blood-red bayonet! Have you grown tame, have you ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... advanc'd his head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat of Jove The direful tyrant to remove. 'No,' says ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... be men of considerable learning, and as they had fallen from a different position, they were looked up to with a certain amount of respect. Some were disposed to sneer at and flout them, but they were on the whole well liked amongst their neighbours. They were very quiet people, and never spoke one word of the matters which came to their knowledge through the letters they were from time to time called upon to write. Almost ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Garcia, Whose name hath reach'd thee long ere now, I trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course—they wait for thee: For thee whom France hath injur'd and cast off; For thee, whose blood it pays with shameful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... is my renown, However the wits may flout— As wide almost as this blessed town" (But he winced as if with gout). "I paid 'em like sin For to put me in, But it's O, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision^; derision; mockery; irony &c (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek^, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn one's back upon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Max. of these idols and quacks Is now thrust in a corner for children to flout, And the red thunder-brand he still grasps in his hand. Lights not Jupiter Tonans to grope ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... she. Oh, that 'are fact was wal known! Wal, that was the reason why Jeff Sullivan couldn't come it round Ruth tho' he was silkier than a milkweed-pod, and jest about as patient as a spider in his hole a watchin' to get his grip on a fly. Ruth wouldn't argue with him, and she wouldn't flout him; but she jest shut herself up in herself, and kept a lookout on him; but she told your Aunt Lois jest ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... do remember?" asked Yorke. "In what have I so deeply offended that I can scarce gain speech of you! Why do you flout one who longs to show you ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... foul weather The rock his arts did flout, Through the long days and the short days, Till all ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... so much better than many of her friends, that in time she seemed to forget it and didn't rebel at Malcolm's advent, or Elizabeth's, but by that time I had been practically ostracized from the nursery; governesses were empowered to flout and insult me; I scarcely saw my children, and what I did see made me furious, so I vetoed more orphans bearing my name, and gave up doing anything. Then came the tragedy of Elizabeth. Surely you understand 'just how' it was ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... would be an unfamiliar America. And it would be a barer America. In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed there has probably not been so much literary energy in the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... its dark and solid grandeur protects and fosters the tenderest of green carpets. See the moss of palest green, its long fronds appearing like ferns, or note those real ferns and coarser bracken fighting the brambles for supremacy or trying to flout that little wild rose daring to assert ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... and the people. That accomplished, half his battle is won. If he can get the people to despise the priest in any capacity as a social man, a politician, &c., he knows that time rubs out fine-drawn distinctions; they will cease to respect at the altar the man they are accustomed to flout on the street; and if they once come to despise the priest, they will soon despise the sacraments he administers, and challenge the Gospel which he preaches. Let us forestall him, and bind the people to our hearts with hoops of steel. For their sakes more than for ours we cannot ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... he said, "I come pretty nigh knowin' what I'm talkin' about. Kun'l Gid Ward can never flout and jeer that the man that has married his sister was nothin' but a prop'ty-hunter. I'm knowin' to it that Cap'n Sproul has got thutty thousand in vessel prop'ty of his own, 'sides what his own uncle Jerry here left to him. Gid Ward ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... and march unto him straight: Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason. And what offence it is to flout his friends. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... me to here put an argument in the favour of what do now be doubted and scorned by some. I will but say that I have seen and know that which hath been wrought by these hags o' the broom and of their power which they held at their beck and wink the which is not to be set on one side at the flip and flout of our young masters and misses, fresh from some teaching drove into their brain pans by some idiotick and skeptick French teacher. I therefore say ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... those who misname themselves "evangelical" and flout their new-found liberty: Have you put down the tyranny of the Pope and obtained liberty in Christ through the Anabaptists and other fanatics? Or have you obtained your freedom from us who preach faith ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... she knows their tongues are venal, sold to flatter wealth and power, And to crouch with serpent homage in the dust at Fortune's shrine, Ready to revile and slander if calamity should lower, And to flout as base, deceitful, what they ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... we fed, Like witless fools, with fostering bread, Have impiously come to this— They've stolen the Acropolis, With bolts and bars our orders flout ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... sometime my thoughts and fancy's pleasure, Where I did list, or time served best and leisure; While Daphne did invite me To supper once, and drank to me to spite me. I smiled, but yet did doubt her, And drank where she had drunk before, to flout her; But, O! while I did eye her, Mine eyes drank love, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... than they intend," said Henry. "When Roger Mortimer took Simon's doings in wrath, and vowed that his sister should never wed a Montfort, he knew not what he did. He and his proud wife could flout and scorn my Isabel—they might not break her faith to me. Thou knowst, perhaps, Richard, since thou art hand and glove with our foes, that like a raven to the slaughter, the Lady Mortimer came as near the battle-field as her care for her dainty person would allow; and there was one whom ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... between the two men. Granice, with a throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight than the law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the incalculableness ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... mayest well be Simplicity, for thou showest thy folly. I have a parsonage, but what? of St Nihil; and Nihil is nothing: Then, where is the church, or any bells for to ring? Thou understandest her not: she was set for to flout. I thought, coining in their names, I should go without. 'Tis easy to see that Lucre loves not Love and Conscience; But God, I trust, will one day yield ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... to fall into the Annals of Cicely or no, this must I needs say—and Jack may flout me an' he will (but that he doth never)— that I do hate, and contemn, and full utterly despise, this manner of dealing. If I love a man, maybe I shall be bashful to tell him so: but if I love him not, never will I make lout ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... speak more plainly, the complexity of modern art influences may make it necessary to call attention to the primitive principles of expression that should never be lost sight of in any work, but hardly justifies the attitude of those anarchists in art who would flout the heritage of culture we possess and attempt a new start. Such attempts however when sincere are interesting and may be productive of some new vitality, adding to the weight of the main stream. But it must be along the main stream, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... ways shown the behaviour of a bondmaid. Thus he reviled with insulting invective not so much the feast as its givers. And presently his companions, taunting him with his old defect of wits, began to flout him with many saucy jeers, because he blamed and cavilled at seemly and worthy things, and because he attacked thus ignobly an illustrious king and a lady of so refined a behaviour, bespattering with the shamefullest abuse ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... fed, Embraced, disgraced, beat back, solicited, Have no fixed heart of Law within his breast, Or with some different rhythm doth e'er contest Nature in the East? Why, 'tis but three weeks fled I saw my Judas needle shake his head And flout the Pole that, east, he Lord confessed! God! if this West should own some other Pole, And with his tangled ways perplex my soul Until the maze grow mortal, and I die Where distraught Nature clean hath gone astray, On earth some other wit than ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... encouraged lightly. "In Benton as in Rome, you know. There is no disgrace attached to laying down a dollar here and there—we all do it. That is part of our amusement, in Benton." She halted. "You are game, sir? What is life but a series of chances? Are you disposed to win a little and flout the danger ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... progress from the moment when the officers dispersed. "Now will I confess, Wilder, a secret pleasure in the belief that yonder audacious fool carries the boasted commission of the German who wears the Crown of Britain. Should he prove more than man may dare attempt, I will flout him; though prudence shall check any further attempts; and, should he prove an equal, would it not gladden your eyes to see St. George come drooping to ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... not unnaturally, quite a sensation in her circle over this attack; Papa Gontier and Maman Cochet clasped each other's hands in sympathy and said, "What will people say next of us, a respectable and time-honoured old couple, if they flout pretty popular little Dorothy Perkins?" "Of course, if people who live in a brand-new red-brick villa choose to invite Dorothy into their garden, one can't expect her to look her best; but, after all, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... But I am bound by the laws of art. Sermons, essays, lives of distinguished people, I can write to order at times and seasons. A story comes, grows like a flower, sometimes will and sometimes won't, like a pretty woman. When the spirits will help, I can write. When they jeer, flout, make faces, and otherwise maltreat me, I can only wait humbly at their gates, watch at the posts ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... dalewards, th' hill-fowk wander yeer by yeer, An' they toss their heeads an' flout me, when they ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... shape and colour of waggon on the Marsh—a plain low-sided trough of deep sea-blue. The name was always painted in white on a small black wooden square attached to the side. Thomas Godden's waggons had been no departure from this rule. It was left to his daughter to flout tradition, and by some obscure process of local reasoning, bring discredit to her dead father by painting her waggons yellow instead of blue. The evil went deeper than mere colour. Joanna was a travelled woman, having once been to the Isle ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... go!" the Baron exclaimed. "What right have you to the child? None at all! Her Highness wishes to be generous. It pleases you to flout her generosity. Mr. Arnold Greatson, you are a fool! Don't you see that you are a pigmy, who has stolen through the back door into the world where great things are dealt with? You have no place there. You cannot keep the child away from us. You have no influence, no ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you mock me!" he cried, and made her laughter but part of a gay duet. "I know I have gone too fast, have said things I should have waited to say; but, ah! remember the small chance I have against the others who can see you when they like. Don't flout me because I try to make the most of a ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... come with thy dart! come, death, when I bid thee! Mors, veni: veni, mors! and from this misery rid me; She whom I lov'd—whom I lov'd, even she—my sweet pretty Mary, Doth but flout and mock, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... foster-son, Bret Harte! Come, Sims, though gigmen flout thy labours! Tom Hardy, blow the clouds apart With sound of rustic fifes and tabors! Dick Blackmore, full of homely joy, Come from thy garden by the river, And pelt with fruit and flowers, old boy, These dismal bores who ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various



Words linked to "Flout" :   gibe, barrack, push aside, flouter, brush aside, tantalise, cod, jeer, brush off, tease, rally, bait, razz, dismiss, ignore, taunt, scoff, ride, rag



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