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Ill-favoured   Listen
adjective
Ill-favoured, Ill-favored  adj.  Wanting beauty or attractiveness; unattractive; deformed; ugly; ill-looking; usually used of a face; as, an ill-favored countenance. "Ill-favored and lean-fleshed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ill-favoured" Quotes from Famous Books



... true, I supposed, that bilge didn't hurt it, as I tugged at the plank on my hands and knees, but I should have myself preferred a more accessible and less humid wine-cellar than the cavities among slimy ballast from which I dug the bottles. I regarded my hard-won and ill-favoured pledges of a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... thereof and on to the grass of the dale, he got amongst the pasturing horses, and passed close by the horse-herd and a woman that was with him. They scowled at him as he went by, but meddled not with him in any way. Although they were giant-like of stature and fierce of face, they were not ill-favoured: they were red-haired, and the woman as white as cream where the sun had not burned her skin; they had no weapons that Hallblithe might see save the goad in the ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... they see any company coming, they ring a little bell which hangs beside them, when many give them alms, particularly those who come out of the country. Many of these idols are black and have brazen claws very long, and some ride upon peacocks, or on very ill-favoured fowls, having long hawks bills, some like one thing and some like another, but none have good faces. Among the rest, there is one held in great veneration, as they allege be gives them all things, both food and raiment, and one always sits beside this idol with a fan, as if to cool him. Here ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... Next morn they rose, And to the Ford of battle forward came. That day a great, ill-favoured, lowering cloud Upon Ferdiah's face Cuchullin saw. "Badly," said he, "dost thou appear this day, Ferdiah, for thy hair has duskier grown This day, and a dull stupour dims thine eyes, And thine own face and form, and what thou wert In outward seeming have deserted thee." "'Tis not through ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... life Gregory had not been unhandsome; debauchery and sloth had puffed and coarsened him. Joseph, on the other hand, had never been aught but ill-favoured. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... knights the daintiest dishes, the savour of which came sweetly-smelling enough to the nostrils of the proud damsel. As often, however, as the knights were helped to meat and drink, the figure of Swanhilda at the board was presented by an ill-favoured Dwarf, who stood as her servant behind her, with an empty basket, whereat the suitor's broke out into wild laughter. She also soon became aware, that as many courses were served up to the guests as she had heretofore dispensed refusals, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... implored us to protect her from a fate worse than death. A message brought Dan, who first disdained to take Duckbill seriously. Told how Soosie had been wooed with gifts, and that her maternal uncle had officiously bestowed her upon the gaunt, ill-favoured king of the camp in accordance with tribal law, which regarded her as a mere chattel at the disposal of the whim and fancy of the nearest relative or at the demand of the most authoritative man, he became concerned and installed himself ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... gloomy—for Irish people. I certainly heard one merry laugh as I was making for my car, and it was at my own expense. A raw-boned, black-haired woman, "tall, as Joan of France or English Moll," insisted that I should buy some singularly ill-favoured apples of her. As I declined for the last time she fired a parting shot, "An' why won't ye buy me apples? Sure they're big and round and plump like yerself, aghra"—a sally vastly to the taste of the bystanders. It struck me, however, that ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... afterwards set upon by the men, and strangled. The women take care of the children. Such of them as are beautiful are sold at a high price to the brothels of Delhi, or other large cities; while the boys and ill-favoured girls are sold for servants at a more moderate rate. These murders are perpetrated perhaps five hundred miles from the homes of the unfortunate victims; and the children thus obtained, deprived of all their relatives, are never inquired ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... honour of the meetin', and more particular for the pleasure of making your young lady's acquaintance—niece, ma'am? daughter, ma'am? granddaughter, by Jove, is it? Hallo! there, mild 'n, I say, stop packin'.' This was to the ill-favoured person with the broken nose. 'Bring us a couple o' glasses and a bottle o' curacoa; what are you fear'd on, my dear? this is Lord Lollipop, here, a reg'lar charmer, wouldn't hurt a fly, hey Lolly? Isn't he pretty, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... friendless wanderers, who come up to every lonely pedestrian, at once to remind him that it is not good for man to be alone, and to alleviate his solitude with your company; good-natured, rough, ill-favoured dogs, with whom our acquaintance has been extensive, dull indeed would the Pincian appear, were it deprived of your grotesque forms and awkward but well-meant gambols! The life of a Campagna sheep-dog, kept half starved in the sight of mutton which he dare not touch, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... in." "A great pity, too, that they cannot remove our hospital," would another exclaim; "as it is, they are obliged to send us their sick, poor wretches. I always think that the sick of Coruna have more ill-favoured countenances than those from other places; but what ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... yet seen in Borneo, but were of far less pleasing countenance and more ferocious aspect than our friends the Kanowits, scarcely deigning to look at the launch as we passed them, but sweeping along down stream with a scowl on their ill-favoured features. ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... the most notorious and malicious and cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black Hag. Now the Black Hag was not only those things that have been said; she was also whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she was notorious and ill-favoured in ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... friend in the Chamber, a deputy newly elected for the Deux-Sevres, called M. Sarigue, a poor man sufficiently resembling the inoffensive and ill-favoured animal whose name he bore, with his red and scanty hair, his timorous eyes, his hopping walk, his white gaiters; he was so timid that he could not utter two words without stuttering, almost voiceless, continually ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... seeking his consolation at court with a young and beautiful Neapolitan singer, who was unhappily married to a poor fiddler, named Polzelli. The two lovers made little secret of their hope that one or both of their ill-favoured spouses would pass away. But they both declined to "die by request," as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... 1741. Deserted by her relations in youth, and possessing only an imperfect education, she was led into a course of irregularities which an early moral training would have probably prevented. She was lame and singularly ill-favoured, but her manners were spirited and amusing. Her chief employment was the composition of verses, and these she sung as a mode of subsistence. She published, in 1805, a volume of doggerel rhymes, and was in the habit of satirising in verse those who had offended her. Her one happy effort ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... but no houses of worthy yeomen or vavassors, or cots of good husbandmen. Here and there was a castle or strong-house, and here and there long rows of ugly hovels, or whiles houses, big tall and long, but exceeding foul and ill-favoured, such as Ralph had not yet seen the like of. And when he asked of Clement concerning all this, he said: "It is as I have told thee, that here be no freemen who work afield, nay, nor villeins either. All those whom ye have seen working have been bought and sold like ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... was on the whole viewed as far from being a beauty. The taste of the day was altogether for light, sandy-haired, small-featured women, like Queen Elizabeth or her namesake of Hardwicke, so that Cis was looked on as a sort of crow, and her supposed parents were pitied for having so ill-favoured a daughter, so unlike all their families, except one black-a-vised Talbot grandmother, whose portrait had been ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there were underhand attempts in plenty and, at least once, open violence—a sudden rush from opposite sides, a growling and spitting like sparks from a smithy; and then, with ears laid flat, two ill-favoured beasts clawed blindly at each other, and a sly and tigerish brindle made away with the morsel. My woman took the thing very coolly I thought, served them all alike, and didn't resent (as I should have done) the unfortunate want of delicacy ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... correct, Sir William Scott, Junr., was caught and put in the dungeon. Sir Gideon Murray decided to hang him, but his lady interposed: "Would ye hang the winsome Laird o' Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... now, and, except that she sang, you might almost have fancied her a corpse. In her voice, also, there had once been beauty and feeling, and here again the traces were small indeed. From time to time, she was stopped by fits of coughing, when an ill-favoured hunchback, who accompanied her on a tambourine, swore and scowled at her. She sang a song of sentiment, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... nothing about admirals here,' said the sergeant of the guard. 'The time for seeing prisoners is over for the day, and if you do not take your ill-favoured body out of this I may try the weight o' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... at the door of my memory. I bid him enter, and I see a tall slim youth, not ill-favoured, wearing well-cut clothes, and carrying a most beautiful, gold-topped Malacca cane delicately in his hand. He is smoking a cigar, and complains to me that his life is a succession of aimless days, and that he cannot find any employment to turn his hand to. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various

... was his mother's back turned, but he was in one knavish action or other, so that his mother was constrained (to avoid the complaints) to take him with her to market, or wheresoever she went or rode. But this helped little or nothing, for if he rode before her, then would he make mouths and ill-favoured faces at those he met; if he rode behind her, then would he clap his hand on his tail; so that his mother was weary of the many complaints that came against him, yet knew she not how to beat him justly for it, because she never saw him do that which was worthy blows. The ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... the trial of sitting over against in my long career. I found out, in conversation with a porter at the station afterwards, that this pension was notorious for the ugly women who put up there, and it is a joke among the porters when they see one very ill-favoured arrive by the train, that she is going to be an inmate of the Hotel ——. The name I will not give, lest any of my fair readers, in that spirit of delightful perversity that characterises the sex, should go there and spoil the credit ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Whereas they can be proved to be no better than common toupees,[182] as a judicious eye may soon discover by their awkward, clumsy, ungenteel gait and behaviour, by their unskilfulness in dress, even with the advantage of wearing our habits, by their ill-favoured countenances, with an air of impudence and dulness peculiar to the rest of their brethren; who have not yet arrived at that transcendent pitch of assurance. Although, it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these counterfeits shall happen to succeed in their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiae, and made, in fact, all the excursions. As there were three, and sometimes half-a-dozen of our friends on these trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a cortege. Among these was an ill-favoured rascal called "John," who always received a dollar a day. One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that John did. He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide, or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way. So John, being called up, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... home to his meals, ate it mattered not what or when. He went out at every hour of the day and night, often slept abroad, and even disappeared for entire weeks at a time. Then too he received the strangest visitors, odd looking men of suspicious appearance, and fellows of ill-favoured ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... stockings Of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... glanced at the speaker, and in a sense fell in love with him at once—as I have explained before, I am one of those to whom a first impression means a great deal. He was not very tall, though strong-looking and well-made enough. He was not very handsome, though none so ill-favoured. He was just an ordinary fair young Englishman, four or five-and-twenty years of age, with merry blue eyes and one of the pleasantest expressions that I ever saw. At once I felt that he was a sympathetic soul and full of the milk of human kindness. He was dressed in a rough tweed suit rather ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... aunt, as puttin' the poker in his hand, she keeked by his shouther, and sid the ill-favoured thing, 'hae a care, sir, what ye're doin'. Back wi' ye, and shut to ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... suffocation. He had worked the gag out of his mouth, and lay as still as a corpse. But soon I saw that he was sleeping quietly, and in his slumbers the madness had died out of his face. He looked like any other sailorman, a trifle ill-favoured of countenance, and dirty beyond ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... the proprietors of the bad ones were fain to make the best of the exchange. Next morning our khidmutgar came up with a most doleful countenance and presented to our notice a pair of certainly most ill-favoured slippers, which a fellow true-believer had INADVERTENTLY substituted for a pair of later date. The lost ones had, in fact, only recently been received from the boot-maker; and the blow was difficult ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... eyed him from head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on your chin I should take you for a girl; and by the finger-nails of St. Luke, no ill-favoured one neither." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... the butcher knelt and lifted him against his knee. He struck me as ill-favoured enough—not to say ghastly—with the dust and blood on his face (for a splinter had laid open his cheek), and its complexion an unhealthy white against his matted hair. I took note that he ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... licence of an old acquaintance, Mary,' said the locksmith, 'who has ever had a warm regard for you, and maybe has tried to prove it when he could. Who is this ill-favoured man, and what has he to do with you? Who is this ghost, that is only seen in the black nights and bad weather? How does he know, and why does he haunt, this house, whispering through chinks and crevices, as if there was that between him and you, which neither durst so much ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... his departure extinguished instantly those sparks of better humour kindled by the dinner and the chest. The group fell again to an ill-favoured silence, and Hemstead began to touch the banjo, as was his habit of an evening. His repertory was small: the chords of Home, Sweet Home fell under his fingers; and when he had played the symphony, he instinctively raised ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... summer, of the majority of plants; and the other in winter, of Acanthaceae, Bauhinia, Dillenia, Bombax, etc. Of these the former are abundant, and render the jungle gay with large and delicate white, red, and purple blossoms. Coarse, ill-favoured vultures wheeled through the air, languid Bengalees had replaced the active mountaineers, jackal-like curs of low degree teemed at every village, and ran howling away from the onslaught of my mountain ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... poor fellow was an orphan— asked him one day what he would like to be. This was an extraordinary condescension on the part of Mr Allfrey, senior, who was a grim, hard-featured man, with little or no soul to speak of, and with an enormously large ill-favoured body. The boy, although taken by surprise—for his uncle seldom addressed him on any subject,—answered promptly, "I'd like ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... pony at bottom,' said Mr. Crummles, turning to Nicholas. He might have been at bottom, but he certainly was not at top, seeing that his coat was of the roughest, and most ill-favoured kind. So Nicholas merely observed that he shouldn't wonder if he was. 'Many and many is the circuit this pony has gone,' said Mr. Crummles, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid, for old acquaintance sake. 'He is quite one of us. His mother was ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... to salute his native land, or feel the solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure, ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony—an ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer on its back—he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing there to take the coach to Southampton ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... one large stone house in the centre of the village, and to this I rode. It was the house of the priest—a snuffy and ill-favoured old man who had not a civil answer to any of our questions. An uglier fellow I never met, but, my faith, it was very different with his only daughter, who kept house for him. She was a brunette, a rare thing in Russia, with creamy skin, raven hair, and a pair of the most ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellously ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as if crushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large, bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not belonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimes ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... shoots. But it is not impossible, only difficult, for man, without renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day to make reparation for the injury which he has inflicted: he is appointed lord of creation. True it is that thorns and thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists rubbish plants, mark the track which man has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay original nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him he leaves a desert, a deformed and ruined land; for childish ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... wad sober me or ony ane," said the matron, "Aweel, Tibb, a lass like me wasna to lack wooers, for I wasna sae ill-favoured that the tikes wad bark ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... conspicuously beautiful. Fifty were deemed worthy of inscription, and quite a tremor of joyful excitement was caused, the measure being regarded as prefacing the shogun's choice of consorts. But Yoshimune's purpose was very different. He discharged all these fair-faced ladies and kept only the ill-favoured ones, his assigned reason being that as ugly females find a difficulty in getting husbands, it would be only charitable ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Goade, who had, as we shall see, some personal acquaintance with Sir Oliver Tressilian, tells us quite bluntly that he was ill-favoured. But then his lordship is addicted to harsh judgments and his perceptions are not always normal. He says, for instance, of Anne of Cleves, that she was the "ugliest woman that ever I saw." As far as we can glean from his own voluminous writings it would seem to be extremely doubtful ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... yourself, how could you submit to that? How could you stand your ground and suffer that to be proved? Clearly not at all. You instantly turn away in wrath. Yet what harm have I done to you? Unless indeed the mirror harms the ill-favoured man by showing him to himself just as he is; unless the physician can be thought to insult his patient, when he tells him:—"Friend, do you suppose there is nothing wrong with you? why, you have a fever. Eat nothing to-day, and drink only water." Yet no one says, "What an insufferable ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... the look, made the words extremely disagreeable; and, furthermore, Ellen had an uncomfortable feeling that neither was new to her. Where had she seen the man before? she puzzled herself to think. Where but in a dream had she seen that bold, ill-favoured face, that horrible smile, that sandy hair? She knew! It was Mr. Saunders, the man who had sold her the merino at St. Clair and Fleury's. She knew him; and she was very sorry to see that he knew her. All she desired ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... great composure; "he has been a wild roving fellow all his life, but—but there is little real harm in him. He is certainly ill-favoured enough to—" here, interrupting himself, and breaking into a new sentence, Aram added: "but at all events he will frighten your nieces no more—he has proceeded on his journey northward. And now, yonder lies my way home. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the painful accuracy of this appellative, her husband was understood to mutter that he had rather be an ill-favoured worm than an overdressed parrot with a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... asked nothing. She was ill-favoured and weak of will.[1348] But the song says that the King on his departure had his old gaiters greased because he had no new ones. Those old jokes about the poverty of the King of Bourges still held good.[1349] The King had not grown ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his father,"—and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the widow's eye brightened ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... eye the quarter-breed realized the extreme danger of his position. His wrath knew no bounds. Up and down he raged in his fury, cursing like a madman, while all about him—blaming, reviling, advising—cursed the men of his ill-favoured crew. For not a man among them but knew that somewhere someone had blundered. And for some inexplicable reason their situation had suddenly shifted from comparative security to extreme hazard. They needed not to be told that with MacNair at large in ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... there could be no doubt about it. La belle Stuart, who had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, was not only smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the reputation a King had ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... not been by so ill-favoured a person, at all events, Tim," replied I; "I cannot return ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... I observe how difficult it is to get rid of a phrase, which the world is once grown fond of, though the occasion that first produced it, be entirely taken away. For several years past, if a man had but an ill-favoured nose, the deep-thinkers of the age would some way or other contrive to impute the cause to the prejudice of his education. From this fountain were said to be derived all our foolish notions of justice, piety, love ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... a hideous and filthy crowd stood round, and not one of them moved a muscle. Finally, we burst into a bare little inn, and had such a desolate breakfast of sour wine, bread, and bully. We finished as soon as we could to leave the nightmare place. Even the houses were gaunt and ill-favoured. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... coast are called Thlinkits, a race numbering about 7000, and once numerous and powerful. But the Siwashes of Wrangell were a miserable-looking lot, the men apparently physically inferior to the women, some of whom would not have been ill-favoured, had it not been for the disgusting habit of daubing their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, which is supposed to keep off mosquitoes, and which gives them the grotesque appearance of Christy Minstrels. Tattooing no longer prevails amongst the Thlinkits, but the men still ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... to him that great labouring band that had come before his eyes, and he said that there was not over the chariot-pole of life a power that could withstand its might. And, as they spake thus with each other, they saw Mider standing before them; high was he girt, and ill-favoured was the face that he showed; and Eochaid arose, and he gave welcome to him. "Thy welcome is such as I expected when I came," said Mider. "Cruel and senseless hast thou been in thy treatment of me, and much of hardship ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... dreamy mood, and rubbed my eyes as if I were not wholly awake, and half expected to see the gay-clad company of beautiful men and women change to two or three spindle-legged back-bowed men and haggard, hollow-eyed, ill-favoured women, who once wore down the soil of this land with their heavy hopeless feet, from day to day, and season to season, and year to year. But no change came as yet, and my heart swelled with joy as I thought of all the beautiful ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... Gangitanu, inhabited by the Gigahui, a wild gigantic people, some ten and some eleven spans high, of whom they saw fourteen of both sexes. They have good complexions, being white and red, but very ill-favoured features. Antonio gave them some procelain dishes and silk, for which they seemed thankful, and brought some cows and deer in return, but their language could not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... tremendous gale. "'Twas a more violent storm," said Howard, "than was ever seen before at this time of the year." The retreating English fleet was, scattered, many ships were in peril, "among the ill-favoured sands off Norfolk," but within four or five days all arrived safely in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the bank to work the springes, Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's journey, with the frog-like structure of the skull, the frog-like limberness of limbs—crafty, slippery, lustful-looking devils, drawn always in outline as though possessed of a dim, infernal luminosity. Horrid fellows are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her nephew with all her heart; and though she dearly liked to tyrannise over him, never allow herself to be really angry with him, though he so frequently refused to bow to her dictation. And she loved Marian Leslie also, though Marian was so sweet and lovely and she herself so harsh and ill-favoured. She loved Marian, though Marian would often be impertinent. She forgave the flirting, the light-heartedness, the love of amusement. Marian, she said to herself, was young and pretty. She, Miss Jack, had never known Marian's temptation. And so she resolved ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope

... above his present station, so gentle and gentleman-like he always appeared. Even on this occasion, when disfigured by paint, pitch, and tar, copiously daubed over his delicate person, to render him fit company for his papa old Neptune, he still looked as if his ill-favoured parents had stolen him, and were trying in vain to disguise their roguery by rigging him up in their own ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... the Fourth of July that an Indian on a rough-looking buckskin pony had won, over all the field that year, a purse containing five hundred dollars. The whites, who had their racers set at naught, were ready for almost any scheme that promised them revenge, and they made an ill-favoured and sulky lot as they sat on the shady side of the movable saloon that lingered still on the racing plain. Their eyes were pinched at the corners with gazing at the sunlight, and their ragged beards were like autumn grass. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... which ran loose. The others were harnessed to pulks, the canoe-shaped reindeer sledges, many of which were filled with stores and baggage. The Lapps were rather good-looking young fellows, with a bright, coppery, orange complexion, and were by no means so ill-favoured, short, and stunted as I had imagined. One of them was, indeed, really handsome, with his laughing eyes, sparkling teeth, and a slender, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... bosky places, in the heart of the great common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... held an inmate that; so far as appearance went, you would have said had no right to be thus distinguished in having a house all to himself. He was of a sober grey colour, somewhat of the wagtail shape, with long black legs, and claws of a dirty hue; and was altogether an ill-favoured bird, not any better-looking than a common house-sparrow. Had you known nothing more about him than his outward appearance, you would hardly have deigned to waste a second look upon him. The moment, however, his black bill was opened, and his lead-coloured throat became ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... village of St. Rome de Cernon, where the houses of dark-gray stone, built on a hillside, are overtopped by the round tower of a small mediaeval fortress which has been patched up and put to some modern use. I thought the people very ill-favoured by nature here, but perhaps they are not more so than others in the district. The harshness of nature is strongly reflected in all faces. Having passed a man on the bank of the stream washing his linen—presumably his own—with bare arms, sinewy and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... free was he in the use of his tongue; and his jests were so scurrilous and so little relished by those to whom they were addressed, that it was, perhaps, well for him, in some instances, that the speed at which he rode soon carried him out of harm's reach. The knave was not ill-favoured; being young, supple of limb, olive-complexioned, black-eyed, saucy, roguish-looking, with a turned-up nose, and extremely white teeth. He wore no livery, and indeed his attire was rather that of a citizen's apprentice ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... time they put no women into nunneries but such as were either purblind, blinkards, lame, crooked, ill-favoured, misshapen, fools, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt; nor encloistered any men but those that were either sickly, subject to defluxions, ill-bred louts, simple sots, or peevish trouble-houses. But to the purpose, said the monk. A woman that is neither fair nor good, to what use serves she? To make ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... worm at all, not even in general appearance. He has six short legs, which he well knows how to use; he is a gad-about, a trot-about. In the adult state the male is correctly garbed in wing-cases, like the true Beetle that he is. The female is an ill-favoured thing who knows naught of the delights of flying: all her life long she retains the larval shape, which, for the rest, is similar to that of the male, who himself is imperfect so long as he has not achieved the maturity that comes with pairing-time. Even in this initial stage the word ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... thought; but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour, and there sat the Laird his leesome lane, excepting that he had beside him a great, ill-favoured jackanape, that was a special pet of his; a cankered beast it was, and mony an ill-natured trick it played—ill to please it was, and easily angered—ran about the haill castle, chattering and yowling, and pinching, and biting folk, especially before ill-weather, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... exclaimed Giles. "Good father, heed not a woman; they are caught by the lip and the fist, like my lord's trencher-man. This Sir Osmund is both lean and ill-favoured. I wonder what the Lady Mabel saw above his shoe to wed with an ugly toad spawned i' the Welsh marshes. Had ye seen her first husband, Sir William Bradshaigh—rest his soul! he was killed in the wars—you ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... whom I supposed to be a radical, after a short pause, again uplifted his voice; he was rather a strong-built fellow of about thirty, with an ill-favoured countenance, a white hat on his head, a snuff-coloured coat on his back, and, when he was not speaking, a pipe in his mouth. "Who would live in such a country ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... to find the Grand Inquisitor of Madrid a kindly and intelligent, though ill-favoured, prelate; but so it was, and he did nothing but laugh from the beginning to the end of my story, for he would not let me call it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... told that his excellency was engaged, had said another hour would do. This man was the prisoner. He came in under guard, but he bore himself quietly enough and made a low bow to the governor. He was not an ill-favoured fellow. His eye was steely cold, but his face was hearty and round, and remarkably free from viciousness. He had a cheerful air and an alert freedom of manner, which suggested ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... looked hard at the newcomer, and thought he had never beheld so ill-favoured a person before. Every feature in his face was distorted. His mouth was twisted on one side, his nose on the other, while his right eyebrow was elevated more than an inch above the left; added to which he squinted intolerably, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... daughter, a fine girl, were with us on the last day. I tried to write in her diary, and made an ill-favoured botch—no help for it. "Stitches will wear, and ill ones will out," as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... and improving the work of the master. The vain incapacity of a self-constituted critic will make him regard his poorest fancy as an emendation; seldom has he the insight of Touchstone to recognize, or his modesty to acknowledge, that although his own, it is none the less an ill-favoured thing. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... worst, his chief desire was to remain in Bohemia with Count Rosenberg, who treated him well, and reposed much confidence in him. Neither had Kelly any great objection to remain; but a new passion had taken possession of his breast, and he was laying deep schemes to gratify it. His own wife was ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was comely and agreeable: and he longed to make an exchange of partners, without exciting the jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was a difficult matter; but, to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in rectitude and right feeling as he was full of impudence ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... woman,' interrupted the Sultan eagerly, 'desiring to see me? Nay, then, the boon is of thy giving, not of mine. Tell me more! Yet it matters not. Were she beauteous as the crescent at even, or ill-favoured as a bird of prey, she shall yet be welcome for thy sake, O faithful Servant, be she a slave or a queen. Tell me only her name and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... to the lodging-house that night suggested thraldom to less romantic tyrants than Cupid. Drink, disease and want were the masters of the ill-favoured men who shambled within at intervals, thrusting the price of a bed through a pigeon-hole at the entrance, receiving a dirty ticket in exchange. These transactions, and the faces of the frowzy lodgers were clearly visible to the watchers ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... lady that desired to fashion her countenance to the best grace, a painter should more benefit her, to portrait a most sweet face, writing Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as she was, who, Horace sweareth, was full ill-favoured. If the poet do his part aright, he will show you in Tantalus, Atreus, and such like, nothing that is not to be shunned; in Cyrus, AEneas, Ulysses, each thing to be followed; where the historian, bound to tell things as things were, cannot be liberal, without ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... from him!" exclaimed a voice from without, and the shadow of Pride, a beetle-browed, black-haired, ill-favoured lad, now darkened ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... adding—'Rosevale not good house to lib by himself in—plenty "padres" die dere, plenty doppies (ghosts) come up dere from de grabe-yard!' Now my dread was not of the 'doppies,' but I did fear the return of the recent ill-favoured visitor. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... meanness and selfishness of Mrs. Mackenzie, and of Sir Barnes Newcome, fatigue the reader; for whereas in the delineation of his amiable and high-principled characters Thackeray is careful to shade off their bright qualities by a mixture of natural weakness, these ill-favoured portraits stand out in the full glare of unredeemed insolence and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... them to me by the flint and the fire; rather, unless they be baleful unto you, and worthy of an evil death, ye shall suffer them to abide with you; ye shall make them become children of the Bears, if they be goodly enough and worthy, and they shall be my children as ye be; otherwise, if they be ill-favoured and weakling, let them live and be thralls to you, but not join with you, man to woman. Now depart ye ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... Aethiop woman posted at the door, With blubber lip and nostril, he descries. Nor will he see again, nor e'er before Had seen a visage of such loathsome guise: Ill-favoured — such was Aesop feigned of yore: If there, she would have saddened Paradise. Greasy and foul and beggarly her vest; Nor half ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... taste or antipathy, pleasure or displeasure, health or sickness, allowed her good husband to abstain from those pleasures stipulated for in all contracts of marriage. In order to be just, it should be stated that the above-mentioned lord was a dirty and ill-favoured person, always hunting wild animals and not the more entertaining than is a room full of smoke. And what is more, the said sportsman was all sixty years of age, on which subject, however, he was a silent as a hempen widow on the subject ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... itself nor yet in the fresh-water rivers—I had to pass down the little stream a mile or more before I came to the proper place for finding the ducks. I went in a small skiff, with no other companion than an ill-favoured cur-dog, with which I had been furnished, and which was represented to me as one of the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... alleged that she had been abducted, and confined during her absence in a house on the Hertford Road, from which she had just escaped. This house she afterwards identified as that of one Mother Wells, a person of very indifferent reputation. An ill-favoured old gipsy woman named Mary Squires was also declared by her to have been the main agent in ill- using and detaining her. The gipsy, it is true, averred that at the time of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty miles away; but Canning persisted in her statement. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... Algernon, on a ride over the downs, passed near the old mill. Miles Gaffin was standing at the door, while behind him, tugging at a sack, was his man, whose countenance appeared to Harry, as he caught sight of it for a moment, one of the most surly and ill-favoured he had ever set eyes on. "No wonder the farmers prefer sending their corn to a distance to having it ground by such a couple," he thought. The miller took off his hat as he saw the lads. Algernon ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... And yet there have been a few famous artists whose extraordinary vocal talent atoned for other very pronounced defects. Such an one was the Pisaroni, a celebrated contralto, said to have been so ill-favoured that she always forwarded her likeness to any opera director to whom she was personally unknown, who offered her an engagement. But so exceptional were her voice and talent, that certain of her contemporary artists have declared that by the ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... struck me as unusually ill-favoured; short, "stumpy," and very dark, or tinged with unclean yellow. Lepers and hideous cripples thrust their sores and stumps in the face of charity. There was no local colouring compared with the carregadores, or coolies, from the northeast, whose ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with an outside pocket from which there peeped forth the cleanest end of a very large and very ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a ring on ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... to me, now. I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain; but, I warrant you, the women have so cried and 270 shrieked at it, that it passed: but women, indeed, cannot abide 'em; they are very ill-favoured rough things. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... who, having just finished a long "palaver" or talk with Major Hope, were now in the act of preparing supper. A fire had been kindled on the greensward in front of the tent, and above it stood a tripod, from which depended a large tin camp-kettle. Over this hung an ill-favoured Indian woman, or squaw, who, besides attending to the contents of the pot, bestowed sundry cuffs and kicks upon her little child, which sat near to her playing with several Indian curs that gambolled round the fire. The master of the family and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... round, with a wicker at each end to admit the live and dead stock that go or are taken on board; the centre of the boat (if such it can be called) is occupied by four lean, ill-favoured hacks, who walk round and round, as if in a threshing machine, and work the paddles at each side. There is a sort of pen for ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... tragic writer, first brought forward on this stage Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS, a girl about twenty, extremely ill-favoured by nature. DUGAZON, the actor, next introduced Madame XAVIER, a very handsome and elegant woman. Lastly, Mademoiselle RAUCOURT presented her pupil, Mademoiselle GEORGES WEIMER, a young girl of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... seemed to have regained his faculties, Horace opened the door and called in Sylvia and her mother, who were, as was only to be expected, overcome with joy on seeing the head of the family released from his ignoble condition of a singularly ill-favoured quadruped. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... my faith!" cried Bennet. "Black, and black-feathered. Here is an ill-favoured shaft, by my sooth! for black, they say, bodes burial. And here be words written. Wipe the blood away. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in one of its finest aspects, as winter began to close in. They had started from Geneva the previous morning at four, and in their day's travel Dickens had again noticed what he spoke of formerly, the ill-favoured look of the people in the valleys owing to their hard and stern climate. "All the women were like used-up men, and all the men like a sort of fagged dogs. But the good, genuine, grateful Swiss recognition ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... hour, robberies and murder were of no uncommon occurrence. The shops upon the bridge were all closed; the low wooden arches thrown across the way were like so many black pits, in every one of which ill-favoured fellows lurked in knots of three or four; some standing upright against the wall, lying in wait; others skulking in gateways, and thrusting out their uncombed heads and scowling eyes: others crossing and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... in life has its own peculiar temptations. The ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home, is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no beauty because it enjoys no sunshine. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... soldier for all time. This place, above all others, was always mentioned with a voice of reverence and awe, and is hallowed by the presence of the gallant dead who helped in its defence. It was truly the most ill-favoured sector on the whole of the ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... remained the same as she had been when an awkward lassie of thirteen. Out of the house there were the most contradictory opinions of her, especially if the voices of women were to be listened to. She was 'an ill-favoured, overgrown thing'; 'just as bonny as the first rose i' June, and as sweet i' her nature as t' honeysuckle a-climbing round it;' she was 'a vixen, with a tongue sharp enough to make yer very heart bleed;' she ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... at the hour of noon, the court boasting the tall residence of Mr. Grabman was startled from the quiet usually reigning there at broad daylight by the appearance of two men, evidently no inhabitants of the place. The squalid, ill-favoured denizens lounging before the doors stared hard, and at the fuller view of one of the men, most of them retreated hastily within. Then, in those houses, you might have heard a murmur of consternation and alarm. The ferret was in the burrow,—a ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Demdike, in a leathern jerkin and blood-red hose, fitting closely to his sinewy limbs, and wrapped in a houppeland of the same colour as the hose, with a coil of rope round his neck. He walked between two ill-favoured personages habited in black, whom he had chosen as assistants. A band of halberdiers brought up the rear. The procession moved slowly along,—the passing-bell tolling each minute, and a muffled drum ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass—besides his being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's only ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... this answer for a refusal, and continued to press his suit with great energy until mid-Lent. But he found her still firm in her declaration that she would love neither himself nor another, which he could not believe, however, seeing how ill-favoured was her husband, and how great her own beauty. Convinced that she was practising dissimulation, he resolved, on his own side, to have recourse to deception, and accordingly he ceased to urge his suit, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... hast more ill-favoured ones among them," said Pioche, with a glance at the grim faces of Rapp and Daru. "I've seen the time when thou'd have said, 'Is it Minette that was wounded at the Adige and stood in the square at Marengo? I'll give her the Cross ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... place. Guns going off, bells going on. Tremendous crowds everywhere. "I am never so lonely," as somebody said, "as when I'm in a crowd." That's just what I feel, especially when the crowd doesn't talk a single word of English. The Russians are not ill-favoured but ill-flavoured, that is, in a crowd. I cheered with them, "Hiphiphurrahski! Hipski! Hurrah-ski!" What I was cheering at I don't know, but I like to be in it, and when at Petersburg ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various

... had been too idle to govern. And he now proposed to squander the money once again, and this time for a private, if a generous end. And the man whom he had reproved for stealing corn he was now to set stealing treasure. And then there was Madame von Rosen, upon whom he looked down with some of that ill-favoured contempt of the chaste male for the imperfect woman. Because he thought of her as one degraded below scruples, he had picked her out to be still more degraded, and to risk her whole irregular establishment in life by complicity in this dishonourable ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sadly into his sweetheart's face, and when he saw her wet eyes and quivering lips his heart was stirred. He took her hand and kissed it, but suddenly an ill-favoured face was thrust forward between the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... respect, which indicates that in the sixteenth century it was no longer in use. I quote from Barnaby Googe's translation of Heresbach (the book which served Izaak Walton as the model for his Compleat Angler): "This tricke might be used in levell and champion countries, but with us it would make but ill-favoured worke." ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... ride the Baron and Tina reach the castle of Jauioz. The old man seats himself near the fire. He is black and ill-favoured as a carrion crow. His beard and his hair are white, and his eyes are ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... of a spy, selecting Odysseus as his comrade. After a prayer to Athena to aid them, they went silently towards the bivouac. It chanced that Hector too had thought of a similar plan and that Dolon had offered to reconnoitre the Greek position. He was a wealthy man, ill-favoured to look upon, but swift of foot, and had asked that his reward should be the horses and ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... hie thee home!" And the white-faced ill-favoured brute was off like a shot in the darkness. Now I might lie down—now I might sleep. In my drowsy stupor I felt that I was being tenderly covered up by my brother; but what with I neither knew nor cared—I was too dull, too selfish, ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell

... an ill-favoured knave;[hq][555] A good deal like a vulture in the face, With a hook nose and a hawk's eye, which gave A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave, Was by no means so ugly as his case; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... piano, whose notes an unseen hand was erratically fingering. Rufus Dawes was seated last on the line—his back to the cells, his face to the gaol wall. This was the place nearest the watching constable, and was allotted on that account to the most ill-favoured. Some of his companions ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... suggestion Loki could scarcely keep from laughing, for the idea of sending the beautiful Freya, the joy and delight of Asgard, to be the wife of this ill-favoured Frost Giant ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... beauty-loving people. He had been very carefully trained by the prudent Cosimo, so that he excelled in physical exercises and could also claim a place among the most intellectual in Florence. Although singularly ill-favoured, he had personal qualities which attracted men and women. He spared no pains to array himself with splendour whenever he appeared in public. At tournaments he wore a costume ornamented with gold and silver thread, and ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... villager envied him his power over unsophisticated maidenhood—a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it. Personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy—made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like 'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... even joining in the massacre of our people. The 60th Rifles and some Goorkhas formed the firing party, and took, strange to say, such bad aim that the provost-sergeant had to finish the work by shooting each culprit with a pistol. Nothing could have been more ill-favoured and dirty than the wretched victims; but they met their fate in silence and ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... become practical when men and women have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the ill-favoured and unattractive. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... remember one dancer who was really a great artist. She was ill-favoured, of middle age, thin; but every part of her was imbued with grace, expressive, from the tips of her toes to the tips of her fingers. The demands of the public sometimes forced upon her odious ballet-skirts, sometimes she wasted her talent on the futilities of ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... everywhere The things he saw and heard of foul or fair. The thronging of the folk that filled the ways; The hubbub of the street and market-place; The sound of heavy wain-wheels on the stones; The comely faces and ill-favoured ones; The girls with apple-cheeks and hair of gold; The grey locks and the wrinkles of the old;— All these remote and unfamiliar Seem'd, and himself a something from afar, Looking at men as shadows on the wall And even the veriest shadow among ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... scarcely ever charming or even attractive; rarely correct in drawing, and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling acutely intense and even dolorous—what is it then that makes Sandro Botticelli so irresistible that nowadays we may have no alternative but to worship or abhor him? The secret is this, that in European ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... but there was among the Trojans a certain man named Dolon, son of Eumedes, the famous herald—a man rich in gold and bronze. He was ill-favoured, but a good runner, and was an only son among five sisters. He it was that now addressed the Trojans. "I, Hector," said he, "Will to the ships and will exploit them. But first hold up your sceptre and swear ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... stood before the collector. He was a lad of twenty, not ill-favoured in looks, but with an expression of distant and pondering vacuity. He wore white cotton trousers, down the seams of which he had sewed red stripes with some vague aim at military decoration. A flimsy blue shirt fell open at his throat; his feet were bare; he held ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... habitual expression of inquiry in his face, just as if he never quite got used to seeing or being seen. The most expert tailor haberdasher could not have provided him with apparel that really belonged to him. Not that he was awkward or ill-favoured in the matter of figure, but that he lacked individuality. He always seemed to be ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... the moment was the mixing and applying of their colours, and, in their eagerness to reproduce the exact contour of a cheek, or the precise shadow of an unbeautiful nose, they would hardly have transferred their attention from the most ill-favoured model to the last and greatest ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... course to pursue. Whilst doing so, I had leisure to contemplate the scene below. Wyatt was not there; but around a table, lighted by two dip-candles stuck in the necks of black bottles, and provided with abundance of liquor, tobacco, tin pannikins, and clay-pipes, sat twelve or thirteen ill-favoured fellows, any one of whom a prudent man would, I am very sure, have rather trusted with a shilling than a sovereign. The unfortunate doctor, pale and sepulchral as the death he evidently dreaded to be near at hand, was sitting propped up in a rude arm-chair; and Ransome, worse, I thought, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... recommended his doctrines by humorous illustration. It is said that he even went to the theatre to see himself caricatured, laughed as heartily as any, and stood up to show the audience how correctly his ill-favoured countenance had been reproduced. This story may be questioned, and it has been observed that he was not insensible to ridicule, for he said shortly before his death that no one would deride him any longer. We are told that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... his hands and stroking his soft round chin, for be it understood, gentle reader, the youth was of a tender and fair complexion, with little beard, save a slight blush on his upper lip. He was not ill-favoured, but there was altogether something boyish and effeminate throughout his appearance, which seemed not of the hue to win a lady's love. He could twang the guitar, and had at times made scraps of verse, which he trolled to many a damsel's ear, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... "It is an ill-favoured thing," I said, "and does more harm than good, but Madre Moreno, I scarcely think will thank me for destroying it, for she always gathered its leaves for some ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison

... according to ancient custom, and then after a moment's silence, the swinging peal rings out, taken up and answered from end to end of the half-wasted city. A troop of men-at-arms ride up to the great closed gate 'in rusty armour marvellous ill-favoured,' as Shakespeare's stage direction has it, mud-splashed, their brown cloaks half concealing their dark and war-worn mail, their long swords hanging down and clanking against their huge stirrups, their beasts jaded and worn and filthy from the night raid in the Campagna, or the long gallop ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... female woman. The young lord whose hand I refused when I took up with wise Jasper once brought two of them to my mother's tan, when hankering after my company; they did nothing but carp at each other's words, and a pretty hand they made of it. Ill-favoured dogs they were; and their attempts at what they called wit almost as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... at a street corner. Number one is a shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... to say, do you hear that, my boy! 'THAT I CALL INDEPENDENCE.' He was in great spirits, the old man, he was so proud of winnin' the race, and puttin' the leake into the New Yorkers, he looked all dander. 'Let them great hungry, ill-favoured, long-legged bitterns,' says he (only he called them by another name that don't sound quite pretty), 'from the outlandish states to Congress, TALK ABOUT independence; but Sam,' said he, hitting the shiners agin till he made them dance right ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Sir,' said Toole, who had no reliance upon the wisdom of the female garrison, and had serious misgivings lest at the first stout summons the maids should open the door, and the ill-favoured pair establish themselves in occupation of poor Mrs. Nutter's domicile, 'I'll not object to the notices being received. There's the servant up at the window there—but you must not make a noise; Mrs. Nutter, poor woman, is sick and hypochondriac, and can't bear a noise; but I'll ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the beginning, prepare the abolition of dignity. This is easy to understand, but it is less easy to explain the ill-fortune that presses upon the expert workman, in search of easy ways to live, all the ill-favoured materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them serviceable and effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter them, turning the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the daily world. It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... same token he was turned to a daffodil, and as he died for love of himself, so, if you remember, there was an old ill-favoured, precious-nosed, babber-lipped, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, slouch-eared slave that, looking himself by chance in a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... hours daily in a small room, called a study. It was a chamber sacred to the occupation followed there. I had not access to it—nor had any stranger, with the exception of two ill-favoured men, whom I had found, for weeks together, constant attendants upon my benefactor. For a month at a time, not a single day elapsed during which they were not closeted for a considerable period with the divine. A three ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... desired to fashion her countenance to the best grace, a painter should more benefit her to portrait a most sweet face, writing Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as she was, who, Horace sweareth, was foul and ill-favoured. ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... over the green and purple hangings, the silver plating of the tent-poles. At one end rose the golden throne of the king; before it in a semicircle the stools of a dozen or more princes and commanders. In the centre stood Mardonius questioning a coarse-featured, ill-favoured fellow, who by his sheepskin dress and leggings Glaucon instantly recognized as a peasant of this Malian country. The king beckoned the Athenian into the midst and was clearly too eager to stand ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... come out at break of day (we must have been observed the evening before), a big schooner—full of as ill-favoured, ragged rascals as the most vivid imagination could conceive. Of course, there had been no resistance on our part. We were outsailed, and at the first ferocious hail the halyards had been let go by the run, and all our crew had bolted aloft. A few bronzed bandits posted ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... head when this lewd story's told? When it shall be confirmed, Philander the young, the brisk and gay Philander, who never failed the woman he scarce wished for, never baulked the amorous conceited old, nor the ill-favoured young, yet when he had extended in his arms the young, the charming fair and longing Sylvia, the untouched, unspotted, and till then, unwishing lovely maid, yielded, defenceless, and unguarded all, he wanted power ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn



Words linked to "Ill-favoured" :   ugly, ill-favored



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