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Ill-fitting   Listen
adjective
ill-fitting  adj.  Fitting poorly; not the proper size and cut; of clothing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ill-fitting" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the Accademia del Disegno for the very frank nudity of his statues.[140] Some of the work of Bandinelli and Bronzino had to be removed. What was a rational and healthy protest has survived in grotesque and ill-fitting drapery made of tin—very negation of propriety. Although needed for biblical imagery, the nude in Italy was always exotic; in Greece it was indigenous. From the time of Homer there had been a worship of physical perfection. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... for the sun-tinge which showed an out-of-doors life, was of that peculiar tint, neither blond nor brunette, which is usually found with hair of that coppery hue, and the whole artistic head but crowned a form whose grace and roundness not even her ill-fitting gown ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... of the room. On a chair by his bed lay Fandor-Vinson's uniform. His valise reposed on a rickety chest of drawers. Fandor was loath to rouse himself. His bed was warm, while about the room icy draughts from ill-fitting door ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... proportions. Allegheny! It was a suitable name, indeed, for such a mountainous person. Her size was truly heroic; she would have been grotesque, ridiculous, except for a certain youthful plasticity and a suggestion of tremendous vigor and strength that gave her dignity. Her ample, ill-fitting dress failed to hide the fact that her robust body ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... the man's face. The last vestige of levity had passed from her. Her cheeks had paled, and she was striving desperately to read behind the ill-fitting smile she beheld. Bill knew. Bill knew all that everybody believed in the valley. He had done what nobody else had done. He had seen Charlie at his work. A desperate feeling of tragedy was tugging at her heart. This great big soul had received ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... clothes were ill-fitting and gave him the appearance of being in danger of bursting from them; his hair was too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane; though his hands were well-shaped they had the recent scars of hard manual labor. Thus, when Olivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper, she ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... and took off their upper clothes, but in Burgundy they kept on their hats, and put on their warmest furs to sit round the great open chimney places, at which the external air rushed furiously from door and ill-fitting window. However, it seems their mediaeval backs were broad enough to bear it: for they made themselves not only comfortable but merry, and broke harmless jests over each other in turn. For instance, Denys's new shoes, though not in direct communication, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... a Catholic graveyard with high adobe wall and are at the Hospital Municipal, our objective point. A dark young man in ill-fitting clothes receives us and shows us about this primitive refuge. The floors are tiled and all the appointments are rude, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... a gray cloth gown, ill-fitting and of coarse material; but no costume could destroy the fairy-like perfection of her form or the daintiness of her exquisite features. With downcast eyes and a troubled expression she stood modestly before them until Patsy caught her rapturously in her arms and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... scrutiny to the little knots of volunteers who had sauntered in to pick up points. To the former it looked odd and out of gear to see the forage-caps and broad white stripes of commissioned officers mingling with the slouch hats and ill-fitting nether garments of the rank ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... concerning which the men should be instructed, but lack of space prevents further treatment of them. They should be taught the proper treatment of blistered feet, for they incapacitate a great many men; the chief causes are ill-fitting shoes and our old friend "uncleanliness." Shoes are the most important article of clothing of the infantryman; each man should have one pair well broken in for marching, and two other pairs. Socks should be soft, smooth and without holes—also clean. Further steps for the prevention of blisters ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... it hard. To make myself letter-perfect in my lessons required long hours of study, but that was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien world was also within my talents; I had been practising it day and night for the past four years. To remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the schoolroom protested against them was a matter still within my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my allowance for many seasons; even less, for as I did not grow much I could wear my dresses ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... son; it was romanticistic. Wholly realistic and rightly actual was that figure of an old woman who is said to have put by all her savings from the grocery business that she might appear properly in the Campo Santo, and who is shown there short and stout and common, in her ill-fitting best dress, but motherly and kind and of ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... that her mother was a dressmaker, Mamie's clothes never looked smart or attractive—she would have felt out of keeping with herself if they had. Her shoes were rather large, and ill-fitting; her skirt hung in lifeless lines from her hips to her feet, of good material but seemingly bad design. At that time the colored "jersey," so-called, was just coming into popular wear, and, being close-fitting, looked well on those of good form. Alas for Mamie Calligan! The mode of the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... critical adversary. It was a glance of amused disdain, softened only by a smile of contempt. As it fell upon me I blushed to the rim of my sombrero. I felt as meanly as though I had been caught in a lie. With her eyes, I saw the bare feet of our negro band, our ill-fitting uniforms with their flannel facings, the swagger of our officers, glancing pompously from their half-starved, unkempt ponies upon the native Indians, who fawned at us from ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... was dressed in an ill-fitting frock coat, trousers which seemed too long, since they concertinaed over his boots, and a glossy silk hat set at the back ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... eventful day, uncle Needham, assisted by John, harnessed the mule to the two-wheeled cart, on which a couple of splint-bottomed chairs were fastened to accommodate Dinah and Cicely. John put on his best clothes,—an ill-fitting suit of blue jeans,—a round wool hat, a pair of coarse brogans, a homespun shirt, and a bright blue necktie. Cicely wore her best frock, a red ribbon at her throat, another in her hair, and carried a bunch of flowers in her hand. Uncle Needham and aunt Dinah were also in holiday array. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... settled down and we began our training. Our first course of study was in the mechanism of the tanks. We marched down, early one morning, to an engine hangar that was both cold and draughty. We did not look in the least like embryo heroes. Over our khaki we wore ill-fitting blue garments which men on the railways, who wear them, call "boilers." The effect of wearing them was to cause us to slouch along, and suddenly Talbot burst out laughing at the spectacle. Then he remembered having heard that some of the original "Tankers" ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... a long way. He said nothing at all. I fumbled for the letter in an inner pocket of my waistcoat, and felt very shy. Macdonald maintained a portentous silence; his enormous body was enveloped rather than clothed in a great volume of ill-fitting white stuff; he held in his hand a great umbrella with a vivid green lining. His face was very pale, and had the leaden transparency of a boiled artichoke; it was fringed by a red beard streaked with gray, as brown flood-water is with foam. I noticed at last that ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... another red letter day for me. On that date I had a detail to pack in supplies, and I had the great fortune to find a new pair of shoes, just my size. What a relief to get rid of those uncomfortable ill-fitting, detestable German boots. If there was one thing that made me hate Germans worse than anything else, it was those horrid German boots. The boys said they were a hoodoo and that if I continued to wear them Fritz would get me ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... examined the wheels of Christina as long as the dogs allowed it to do so. Each flock was followed by two men, and sometimes a child in ill-fitting clothes on a pony, and sometimes a woman with a ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... in a young woman with blond hair and an ill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a strange look in ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... he was roused by the opening of the door, and, glancing up, beheld John Peterby. A very different person he looked from the neat, well-groomed Peterby of a week ago, what with the rough, ill-fitting clothes he wore and the fur cap pulled low over his brows; the gentleman's gentleman had vanished quite, and in his stead was a nondescript character such as might have been met with anywhere along the River, or lounging in shadowy corners. He carried a bundle beneath one arm, and cast a swift look ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... to the king, as soon as you are enrolled. You must remember that your favour, or otherwise, with him will depend very largely upon the fit of your uniform, and the manner in which you carry yourself. There is nothing so unpardonable, in his eyes, as a slovenly and ill-fitting dress. Everything must be correct, to a nicety, under all circumstances. Even during hot campaigns, you must turn out in the morning as if you ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... of mail, comprising over one hundred thousand letters, are received here every day. Yes, madam, I said every day. About half of these letters are orders. Last year the banking department counted one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. One hundred and thirty millions!" He stands there in his ill-fitting coat, and his star, and rubs one bony hand over ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... usefulness, but the proportions should be satisfactory, the arrangement convenient, the materials the very best of their kind, and the workmanship well and faithfully performed. Rough work, open joints, ill-fitting ventilators, ill-proportioned plans and forms, and a general tumble-down appearance, is not the kind of economy we should recommend to our readers or practice on our own place. One may choose between wood and masonry for the foundation walls; between the several grades ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... night a fierce northeast snow-storm had been hissing and drifting through the frozen air, pelting angrily at the shuttered and curtained windows of the rich, and shrieking with scornful laughter as it forced its way through the ill-fitting casements and loose doors of the poor, clutching at them with icy fingers as they cowered over their poor fires, and spreading over the garret-beds in which they sought to hide from him a premature shroud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... fellow and well built, but his clothes, the majority of which his Aunties still fashioned, were always too small and very ill-fitting. They seemed to have a tendency to work up to his neck and they were all crowding to the top when he lurched forward and took his ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a muscle ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... the average American of the better class is not imbued with the sporting spirit. He wears it like an ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature among the Americans in connection with their sports. Thus if something is known and recognized as sport, people take to it with avidity, but if the same thing is called labor or exercise, it is considered hard work, shirked and avoided. This is very cleverly ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... stood in the wide hearth; a bookshelf against the wall held a dozen volumes. There were three doors, one leading to the private oratory, one to the ante-room, and the third to the little paved court. The south windows were shuttered, but through the ill-fitting hinges streamed knife-blades of fiery light from the hot ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... standard. You love dress too much when you care more for your outward adornings than for your inward dispositions,—when it afflicts you more to have torn your dress than to have lost your temper,—when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown than by a neglected duty,—when you are less concerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn a passee bonnet,—when you are less troubled at the thought of being found at the last great feast without the wedding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... and a familiar figure in an ill-fitting red jacket and forage cap strode firmly, defiantly between the rows of humble Japatites. Close behind them came a tall, resolute grenadier of ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... example, on the hands, from the use of various tools and implements, and on the feet from ill-fitting shoes. It is, indeed, often to be looked upon as an effort of nature to ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately and solemnly ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... the time," said the lady petulantly. "But you look quite handsome when you say it. Take off that ill-fitting coat. It isn't thick enough for winter, anyway. What in the world have you got round your waist? A belt? Why, that's a man's belt! And what have you got in it? Pistols? Horrors! Marie, take them away quick! I shall faint! I never could bear to be in a room with one. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... savant over some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity—in the interests of art—that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy was sitting with his legs crossed. He looked down at his ill-fitting, shabby trousers, and then turned up the sole of one shoe which was worn through almost to his sock. The Lizard watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He knew that the other was thinking hard, and that presently he would reach a decision, ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... unfettered liberty. I very much doubt if, when at last the days for the sane complete discussion of our sexual problems come, it will give us anything at all in the way of "Liberty," as most people understand that word. In the place of the rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting, violent implements from which it was yet possible to wriggle and escape to outlawry, it may be the world will discover only a completer restriction, will develop a scheme of neat gyves, light but efficient, beautifully adaptable to the wrists and ankles, never chafing, never oppressing, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... up within—the day when she had said to her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not yet a year—the beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something—something—Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that longing first came to her. She was giving him tea, it was quite early in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... did not move. He stood looking down upon the poor woman before him, a world of pity expressed in his deep-set eyes. Through the absolute silence around there came the sound as of a gentle flutter, the current of cold air, mayhap, sighing through the ill-fitting shutters, or the soft, weird soughing made by unseen things. The man's heart was full of pity, and it seemed as if the Angel of Compassion had come at his bidding and enfolded the sorrowing ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... observer even in the old days would have found little beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting ready-made clothing, and Nettie—Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her through the picture, and her living brightness and something of that mystery of charm she had for me, comes ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... Seattle he went through the customary baggage check. He saw the clerk frown at his ill-fitting clothes and not-quite-human face, and then read his passage permit carefully before brushing him on through. Then he joined the crowd of travelers heading for the city subways. He didn't hear the loudspeaker blaring ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... strange and terrifying appearance. The unkempt hair that covered his face and through which his keen eyes glowed like fire, gave him an unusual and formidable aspect. In one hand he held the ugly-looking jemmy he had taken from the burglar, and the new clothes he had donned, ill-fitting and soiled, served to accentuate ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... positive and negative, density and potential, to be measured in ohms (whatever they may be), and partially imitated with Leyden jars and red sealing-wax apparatus. Why, did not Benjamin Franklin, a fat old gentleman in ill-fitting small clothes, bring it down from the clouds with a simple door-key, somewhere near Philadelphia? and does not Mr. Robert Scott (of the Meteorological Office) calmly predict its probable occurrence within the next twenty-four ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... young man. He nodded to the dummy-chucker. In a daze, the mendicant followed his rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped into an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood. The dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his ill-fitting, run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the lift, as gingerly as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his every-day apparel; but Phoebe, arrayed in a rustling silk of delicate gray, that had been worn about half a dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... only long afterwards I realised that he was a supernumerary clerk in the Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful man at home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown eyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a paper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a large Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also he cultivated the little garden-yard behind the house, and he had a small ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... close range, Stafford scrutinized his guest more narrowly. Quickly he took note of his ill-fitting clothes, cheap tie, frayed linen and shabby shoes. He hardly looked the kind of man likely to be burdened with heavy business responsibilities. Nodding sympathetically, so as to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... have gone home?" he wondered. Apparently not, for his foeman left the shelter of the wood, and he could see him walk slowly across the open. He was clad in a loose and almost grotesquely ill-fitting garment, seemingly of sheep-skin, and held an arrow on his bow ready to shoot on a sign of movement. When he had come within ten or fifteen yards, he suddenly dropped his bow, drew his sword, and stepped quickly forward. At the same instant Estein jumped to his feet, and with ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... this! Pete fancied the inquiring looks turned from the man to the man's posted picture. It was no longer a faithful likeness, of course; still, it was a likeness. There was no other man in all the world like Hugh! He was made of odd, fantastic fragments, of ill-fitting parts—physically, mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image. Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... interest in the housework that our generally servantless condition put upon her—she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week—but she did not do it with any great skill. She covered most of our furniture with flouncey ill-fitting covers, and she cooked plainly and without very much judgment. The Penge house, as it contained nearly all our Bromstead things, was crowded with furniture, and is chiefly associated in my mind with the smell of turpentine, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... Waldstricker met Lysander Letts, just back from Auburn, loitering along Buffalo Street near the Lehigh Valley station. The prison-pallor of the squatter's face and hands and the ill-fitting, cheap prison clothes on his big body made him conspicuous among the men on the street. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... is perhaps what she was like to Mrs. Mark, sitting there in her funny ill-fitting clothes, her anxious old-fashioned face as of a child aged long before her time. Katherine Mark, who had had, in her life, her own perplexities and sorrows, felt her heart warm to this strange isolated girl. She had needed in her own life at one time all her courage, and she had used ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... on the feet are not uncommon as the result of wearing tight, or ill-fitting shoes. Wherever possible, they should be quickly relieved from all compression, and should under no ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... physical condition of the school-house was reflected in the physical condition of the children. For example, a poorly lighted and badly ventilated school-house always housed children with eye strain and nervous disorder, and in a school-house having ill-fitting desks ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... clearly foresee the hopeless bathos of the end. Poor child, her real, deep sorrows, expressed in such worn-out ill-fitting phrases, are as little touching as the beauty of a London shopgirl under the ready-made cast-off adornments of her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... myself, sketched portions of it. Even Rosebud stood gravely sketching some of the inlaid figures of the pavement. As for me, I can but try to preserve some memorial of this beautiful edifice in ill-fitting words that never hit the mark. This morning visit was not my final one, for I went again after dinner and walked quite round the whole interior. I think I have not yet mentioned the rich carvings of the old oaken seats round the choir, and the curious mosaic of lighter ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the door, at the ill-fitting threshold, there showed a thin line of light. Rhoda Gray, with her ear against the door panel, listened. There was no sound of voices from within. Pinkie Bonn, then, was still alone, and still waiting for the Pug. She glanced sharply around her. There was only darkness. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... his cassock and put away his hat, and, a ludicrous figure in ill-fitting black knee-breeches and a not very clean shirt, a red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagant blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria was encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was stifling his hysterical ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... square and took up its position. We entered. McKeogh took charge of Aristide's valise, tucked us up in the rug, and settled himself in his seat. The car started and we drove off, Aristide gallantly brandishing his hat and Mme. Gougasse waving her lily hand, which happened to be hidden in an ill-fitting black glove. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... chair which Wessex placed for him. The Assistant Commissioner, doubtless stimulated by the manner of his extraordinary visitor, who now extracted a cigar from the breast pocket of his ill-fitting jacket and nonchalantly lighted it, successfully resumed his well-known tired manner, and, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... with gray hair hanging down, and in petticoat-bodice, gaping at the neck, opened the door when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and slammed it to when she saw Christophe. There were several flats on each landing, and through the ill-fitting doors Christophe could hear children romping and squalling. The place was a swarming heap of dull base creatures, living as it were on shelves, one above the other, in that low-storied house, built round a narrow, evil-smelling yard. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... to immortal fame had met and passed with scarcely a glance at each other. The young army officer was too much of a gentleman to mark the ill-fitting blue jeans of the awkward captain of militia. Great events, after all, make men great. Only the eye of God could foresee the coming tragedy in which these two ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... with—and their dress! It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, 'to prevent her from making it foolish'; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place. It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite unaware that they were ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her safe," he mused. She was fifty, small, nervous and worn and wore a set of ill-fitting false teeth that rattled as she talked. When she did not talk she rattled them with her tongue because ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... watch Bruce walk across the office and he noticed how he towered almost head and shoulders above the clerk at the desk: and he saw also, how, in spite of his ill-fitting clothes so obviously ready-made, he commanded, without effort, the attention and consideration for which, in his heart, Sprudell knew that he himself had to pay ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... pictures or carpets, as well as even such things as cooking utensils; and in the Queen's sudden removal back again from Tixall, many matters must have been neglected. The oak wainscoting was completely bare; and over the upper parts of the walls in many places the stones showed through between the ill-fitting tapestries. A sheaf of pikes stood in one corner; an oil portrait of an unknown worthy in the dress of fifty years ago hung over one of the doors; a large round oak table, with ink-horn and pounce-box, stood in the centre of the room ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... company" with Jake Crouthamel. "Chake," as Sibylla called him, was a sturdy, red-faced young farmer, all legs and arms. He appeared to be put together loosely at the joints, like a jumping-jack, and never appeared at ease in his ill-fitting "store clothes." He usually wore gray corduroy trousers and big cowhide boots, a pink and white striped shirt ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... lilies in her hand would do their part to stimulate. She submitted to this possibility, and waited for his coming, which began to seem unreasonably delayed. The door opened at last, and a tall, powerfully framed man of thirty-five or forty, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of gray Canada homespun appeared. He moved with a slow, pondering step, and carried his shaggy head bent downwards from shoulders slightly rounded. His dark beard was already grizzled, and she saw that his mustache was burnt ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... are, however, easily discerned from the true Priest. Should one of them ever appear before the Father of the faithful in these ill-fitting robes the venerable Pontiff would exclaim, with the Patriarch of old: "The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." I feel the garment of the Priest, but I hear the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Perceval,—with his retreating forehead, long pointed nose, drab cloth coat and exuberant shirt frill; "What? What? What?"—Great George himself, as he appeared in 1810, in full military panoply—huge ill-fitting boots, huge blue military coat, collar, lappets, and star, a white-powdered bob surmounting a clean-shaved unintellectual face, the distinguishing characteristics of which were a pair of protruding eyes surmounted ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... appropriate harmonic, polyphonic, and rhythmic garments. These garments are the raiment in which the inspiration will be viewed by future generations. It is often by these garments that they will be judged. If the garments are awkward, inappropriate and ill-fitting, a beautiful interpretation of the composer's ideal will be impossible. Nevertheless, it is the performer's duty in each case to try to see through even unbecoming garments and divine the composer's thought, according to the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... the doctor had taken in pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... had been lighted, and a streak of light came from beneath the ill-fitting door which led into the other room, from which the low murmur of voices could be heard as the young men ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... Minn. She has more misery over an ill-fitting dress, an unshapely shoe, or an awkward glove, than you and I have in an age. I was born out of my sphere, I know I was; I ought ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... out, presently, dressed in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now of decent length, ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step; because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young. If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth, and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... dressed in an ill-fitting suit of broad-cloth, with a shabby silk hat and country-made boots. He stared up at the globe, as if to take his bearings in the fog; then ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... should be large enough to allow freedom to the toes, and not so large as to wrinkle on the foot. In a well-fitting stocking the foot can be more accurately measured than otherwise, and the comfort of the foot is sadly impeded by an ill-fitting one. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... petticoats. They are obviously and incontestably of the class described by a witty writer to whom "a lace petticoat is as much a badge of infamy as a cigarette on the stage." The German proletariat cannot be susceptible to externals, else the universal sad-coloured skirt, the ill-fitting blouse and the ugly hat worn by his women-folk could not find favour ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... soft Leghorn straw, in which we have seen her before, the wide brim falling lower on one side than the other, over her dark curls. As she swept up the aisle between the rows of farmers and farmers' wives, the contrast between their coarse, ill-fitting and sad-colored homespun, and her rich and tasteful robes, was not more striking than the difference between the delicate distinction of her features and their hard, rough faces, weather-beaten and wrinkled ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... was small, thin, and wiry, with the beak of a turkey-buzzard, the complexion of an Indian, and a set of large, white, very ill-fitting false teeth, which clicked like castanets whenever ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... pockets, &c., should never be made until the wearer has tried the coat on her own horse, with a critical friend to ride with her and tell her if anything is amiss with it. The little extra trouble this precaution may involve, is nothing as compared with the disappointment of having to "put up" with an ill-fitting garment. Some tailors have a Mayhew saddle on their block horse for fitting skirts; because in that kind of saddle, the crutches give them no trouble as regards "poking up"; but if a lady uses a saddle with ordinary crutches, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... flickering lamp on a Gothic table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or brighter, across the bed, so that the dying man's face seemed to wear a different look at every moment. The bitter wind whistled through the crannies of the ill-fitting casements; there was a smothered sound of snow lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of these sights and sounds with the scenes which Don Juan had just quitted was so sudden that he could not help shuddering. He turned cold as he came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a sudden vehement ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac

... working girls, the office clerks came past, breathing upon their chilled fingers and munching penny rolls. Some of them are gaunt young fellows in ill-fitting suits, their tired eyes still fogged from sleep. Others are older men, stooped and tottering, with faces pale and drawn from long hours of office work and glancing nervously at their watches for ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... angry controversy, during which the startled negroes rested upon their oars, while the enraged guard threatened to fire if they drifted a yard closer. In the midst of this hubbub a head suddenly popped up above the rail. Then a tall, ungainly figure, clad in a faded, ill-fitting uniform, raised itself slowly, leaning far out over the side, a pair of weak eyes, shadowed by colored glasses, gazing down ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... happy until he caught sight of his own reflection in the pool, and then he could not bear to stay any longer in this wood, because unlike the squirrel and the woodpecker and the jay he was an ugly intruder here, a scarecrow in ill-fitting clothes, round the ribbon of whose hat like a chain ran the yellow zigzag of Haverton House. He became afraid of the wood, perceiving nothing round him now except an assemblage of menacing trunks, a slow gathering ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... brown cord that hung from Mary's waist, and smelled the sweet breath of the cattle, and the burning oil of Joseph's lantern hung against the wall, and shivered as the night wind shrilled under the ill-fitting door and awoke ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... slickers and set horses to humping backs and turning tail to the drive of it and one heard the cook muttering profanity because the wood was wet and the water ran down the stovepipe and hungry men must wait because the stove would not "draw," the Double-Crank raked the range. Horses grew lean and ill-fitting saddles worked their wicked will upon backs that shrank to their touch of a morning. Wild range cattle were herded, a scared bunch of restlessness, during long, hot forenoons, or longer, hotter afternoons, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... look much like that in my case. This dress," he said, looking down at his coarse, ill-fitting uniform, cowhide shoes, etc.; "this dress, this drilling, these close quarters, coarse food and mixed company are enough to take the military ardor ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... but not the same. He now was in stiff, ill-fitting and exclaimingly new clothing. A new dark hat oppressed his perspiring brow, new and pointed shoes agonized his feet, a new white collar and a tie tortured his neck. He had been owner of these things no longer than overnight. He did not ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... entirely changed that I scarcely knew him, sauntered slowly down the hall after his friend. Blythe had evidently brought him some fresh clothes from Monte Carlo, and he had used his room as a dressing-room. He looked very much older, and the dark-brown suit he now wore was out of shape and ill-fitting. His hair showed grey over the ears, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... was a "sport suit" of a large-sized green and black check. It was cheap material, and badly cut, and its ill-fitting coat hung on Azalea's slim shoulders in baggy wrinkles. Her blouse was bright pink Georgette, beaded with scarlet beads, and altogether, perhaps her costume could not have been worse chosen or made up,—at least, from ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... are lined with large and famous sugar-plantations. Midway on the northern side, lie the beautiful estates of "Belmont" and "Belle Alliance." Early one morning in the middle of October, 1878, a young man, whose age you would have guessed fifteen years too much, stood in scrupulously clean, ill-fitting, flimsy garments, on the strong, high levee overlooking these two plantations. He was asking the way to a place called Grande Pointe. Grand Point, he called it, and so may we: many names in Louisiana that retain the French spelling ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... midway at the sight of Charles, exclaiming: "Why, Tur—" The second syllable of the name was nipped off in mid-air, and the outstretched arm was dropped, as the patron of billiards took in the cut of his former friend's coat. He gazed at the ill-fitting garment with a kind of astonished animosity, and then his puzzled look shot upwards to the face surmounting it, no doubt with the feeling that he may have been deceived by a chance resemblance. Charles went past him without a sign of recognition, but he felt that the other was still ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... a cleanly, neat look about him which attracted me at once. His face was as rosy as an apple, and his large, white teeth were as sound as new silver dollars. His dark hair, which was inclined to be curly, was cut short, and the ill-fitting clothes could not conceal the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... was empty. He turned again. From under the ear-flanging hat looked unflinchingly the clear, steady blue eye of the woodsman. And so we knew. This old soldier had come in from the Long Trail to bear again the flag of his country. If his clothes were old and ill-fitting, at least they were his best, and the largeness of the empty sleeve belittled the too-largeness of the other. In all this ribald, laughing, irreverent, commonplace, semi-vicious crowd he was the one note ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... slightest sense of humor, she could not but have been amused at the picture which he presented in the revealing fire-light with his elfish and ape like body much too small to fill out the tattered and ill-fitting garments that hung about it. But she only wondered at him and his rags, and at his motive ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for a while, semi-conscious of Quair's bantering voice and the girl's easily provoked laughter ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... shabby cap and an ill-fitting sweater which bulged in back as if something were being carried in the rear pocket. And there he stood, a poor little figure, heedless of the merry throngs that passed, his wistful gaze fixed upon ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... unkept lawns, overgrown with large wild flowers, and grass-covered avenues leading on the right to a distant mound, thickly dotted with ruins, and, on the left, to a small, tumbledown house with ill-fitting shutters. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... too, Protestant vindicators of religion are at an immense disadvantage. They are hampered by principles, which they should never have adopted. Private judgment is to them what Saul's armor was to David, ill-fitting, and cumbersome. To borrow an illustration from Archbishop Whately, "They are obliged to fight infidelity with their left hand; their right hand being tied behind them." One of the specialties of this age is "historical research." The application ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... to behold an ungainly young man in an ill-fitting blue suit. His face was pimply, his eyes a Teutonic blue, his yellow hair rumpled, his naturally large mouth was made larger ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... look—as there was evidence in his walk also—of his being tired from prolonged exertion or endurance. He was decently, though not expensively, clad in black cloth, his three-cornered felt hat, wide-skirted coat, and ill-fitting knee-breeches, being all of the same solemn hue. I was to perceive later that his clothes were old and carefully mended. His gray silk stockings ill accorded with his poor shoes, of which the buckles were of steel. He ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... forward in the present condition of affairs. She went out to the post-office at the first moment when she could hope to find the telegraph office at work, and just as she had turned from it, she met a girl in a dark, long, ill-fitting jacket and black hat, with ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... culprits was hardly such as to provoke the sympathies of even a French jury. Fenayrou seemed to be giving a clumsy and unconvincing performance of the role of the wronged husband; his heavy figure clothed in an ill-fitting suit of "blue dittos," his ill-kempt red beard and bock-stained moustache did not help him in his impersonation. Mme. Fenayrou, pale, colourless, insignificant, was cold and impenetrable. She described the murder of her lover "as if she were giving her cook a household ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... opal eyeballs rolled from side to side as, looking rather awkward in his ill-fitting European dress, he tried hard to emulate the dignity of his bronze followers in baju and sarong, each man with the handle of his kris carefully covered by a ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were made matters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, placed them outside the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... she burst into the room again he saw that all he had been thinking about her was true. It might be that everybody else on earth would see her as nothing but a red-haired girl in an ill-fitting blue serge dress with an appalling tartan silk vest, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... vessel of some five hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across her main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which, instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to inflict such devastation as those wicked ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... been absent for ten minutes, which seemed half an hour. Then, when Lady Turnour had begun muttering to herself that she was freezing, Sir Samuel bustled back, in a cheerfulness put on awkwardly, like an ill-fitting suit of armour in ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... that under this ill-fitting, already draggled skirt, and loose, ridiculous man's jacket were concealed the fine skin and well-tended person of a lady, filled her with expectation of romance. If the Millsborough Herald had taught her to despise the "low ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... wenches as one could wish not to see. They all wear palm-leaf hats stuck on their heads without strings or ribbons, and their clothes are so ill-made that you cannot help thinking that each has borrowed somebody else's dress, until you see that the ill-fitting garments are the rule, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... and supervision, as the rupture (the bowel) must, before putting on the truss be cautiously and thoroughly returned into the belly; and much care should be used to prevent the chafing and galling of the tender skin of the babe, which an ill-fitting truss would be sure to occasion. But if care and skill be bestowed on the case, a perfect cure might in due time be ensured. The truss must not be discontinued, until a perfect cure ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... fifteen years old, tall, thin, and homely, when he entered this office. The other clerks were inclined to jeer at his awkwardness and his plain, home-made, ill-fitting clothes. But Henry's sharp retorts quickly silenced them, and they soon grew to respect and like him. He was an earnest student. He stayed indoors and read in the evenings, while the other young ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... she should start, she was told that a gentleman, who would give no name, and who had come in a carriage of which the blinds were drawn, wished to see her. When she went down to the parlour, she saw a spare old man, with a face much lined and wrinkled, who was clad in ill-fitting, old-fashioned clothes, fidgeting ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... and chunky, he was not at all the picturesque figure which fancy has painted of his class. Instead of the red toque, which artists place on the heads of habitants, he wore a cloth cap with ear flaps coming down to be tied under his chin. His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat of some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above brightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf, that held ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... farmhouses. Naturally Georgie soon began to talk about, and take an interest—as girls will do—in the young gentlemen of the town, and who was and who was not eligible. As for the loud-voiced young farmers, with their slouching walk, their ill-fitting clothes, and stupid talk about cows and wheat, they were intolerable. A banker's clerk at least—nothing could be thought of under a clerk in the local banks; of course, his salary was not high, but then his ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... day had been bitter cold, and as it drew to a close it became colder still, and a fierce wind rose and whistled about the old house, shaking the ill-fitting windows and doors. But the sick man did not seem to hear it. Toward midnight he fell into a deep ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... for we were escorted by the son of the sheikh of one of the subtribes of the latter country. At all events, I must have been a sore temptation for any evil disposed Fuzzy Wuzzy; for, owing to my camel being badly galled by an ill-fitting saddle, I would find myself for many hours entirely alone picking my way by the light of the moon, the poor brute I was riding not being able to keep pace with the rest. All the following day our route ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... Roland feared to call, "Denasia!" He hesitated at the foot of the narrow stair and then went softly to the door. All within was still as the grave, but a glimmer of pale light came from under the ill-fitting door. He might be mistaken in the room, but he resolved to try. He turned the handle and there was an instant movement. He went forward and Denasia stood erect, facing him. She made no sound or sign of either anger, or astonishment, or affection. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... heavily that she scarcely had strength to close the door in the face of the riotous storm. As she stood panting and wheezing in the little parlor, into which the street door opened, she made a remarkable picture. She was clad in a dark, ill-fitting dress, fastened around the waist by a broad strip of faded yellow ribbon; about her neck the parchment-like skin hung in heavy folds, while her entire face was seamed over and over with deep wrinkles, giving it a ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... children, especially diseases of the throat and lungs, may often be traced directly to gross carelessness, ignorance, or neglect with reference to undue exposure. The delicate feet of children should not be injured by wearing ill-fitting or clumsy boots or shoes. Many deformities of the feet, which cause much vexation and trouble in after years, are ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... attitude of the buffo's critic who escaped from Paris in the teatrino at Palermo; nevertheless the countrymen of Schubert have known how to appear before the world clothed in the solemn splendour of Haydn's majestic Hymn to the Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made suit of second-hand flourishes, as though that were the best they could lay their hands on. They have not done themselves justice. But this is not the place for a digression; before returning to Pilate and his visitors, however, let me say distinctly that the music was the Italian ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of most use to these normal city working girls are the mothers who develop a sense of companionship with the changing experiences of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... were of that class of Americans who dressed in cheap imitations of fine clothes, are forever travelling, travelling,—taking the steamers not from preference, but because they are less costly than an all-rail route. The thin, listless men, in ill-fitting black clothes and shining tall hats, sat on the deck in tilted chairs hour after hour silent and dreary; the thin listless women, clad in raiment of many colors, remained on the fixed sofas in the cabin hour after hour, silent and weary. At meals they ate indiscriminately everything within ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... three men stepped over to the spot, but Tom, who did not dare to join them, stood just where he was, looking uncouth and out of place in the ill-fitting white duck jacket and blue peaked service cap which had ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... miserable for a few days. But not they. They spattered their limp, ill-fitting garments with jest, and soon they had produced a poem in praise of the change. These are the verses which a Belgian soldier, clad in his fresh yellow, sang to us as we grouped around him ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... highway, with Deering and Cassowary at his heels. The car had been run into an old barn, which had evidently served Hood before. Within twenty-four hours they would be touring again, he announced. The change from his dress clothes to ill-fitting rags had evidently wrought a change of mood. Between whiffs at his pipe he sought consolation in Wagner, chanting bars of ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson

... Tyrolese thing was a strange jumble of art and naivete, of talent and stupidity. There was a full-fledged stage and footlights, and the scenery, some one said, was painted by a man from Munich. But the players were badly made up; the costumes, if correct, were ill-fitting; the stage was badly lighted, and the flats didn't 'jine.' Some of the actors had gleams of artistic perception. St. Mark was beautiful to look on, Caiaphas had a sense of elocution, the Virgin was tender and sweet, and Judas rose powerfully to his great ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... consumed in finishing the sails and putting them on. There were only three—the jib, foresail, and mainsail; and, patched, shortened, and distorted, they were a ridiculously ill-fitting suit for so trim a ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... his home, in an unmistakably ill-fitting suit of clothes and accompanied by a Chinaman, equally badly dressed, he caused great surprise to his family. If he had returned dressed in 'fear-noughts' and a jersey, or even in 'oilies,' they would not have been surprised, but there ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... one of the front desks, sat a boy, slender and undersized for his thirteen years. The ill-fitting crudity of his neatly patched clothes gave him a certain uniformity with his fellows, yet left him as unlike them as all things else could conspire to make him. The long hair that hung untrimmed over his face seemed a black emphasis for the cameo delicacy of his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... who had exactly that revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings of Bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the Italian campaign. The face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff. It was, however, the coat of a marechal; and, what rendered it still more singular, it was entirely without orders. I was curious to know who this relic of 1797 might be; for, apart from his rank, which ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... my mother?" exclaimed Bernardine, clasping her hands together, and looking eagerly at the stranger in the coarse, ill-fitting gown. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... worth-while experience. It was a new kind of city—a city without a loafer, without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their ill-fitting civilian clothes and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... nay, sometimes ludicrous in form; citizens in lumpish robes and long-tailed caps; ladies in stiff and foldless brocade hoops and stomachers; artizans in striped and close-adhering hose and egg-shaped padded jerkin; soldiers in lumbering armour-plates, ill-fitted over ill-fitting leather, a shapeless shell of iron, bulging out and angular, in which the body was buried as successfully as in the robes of the magistrates. Thus we see the men and women of the Renaissance in the works of all its painters: heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty in Filippino, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... old-fashioned costume of coat and breeches, ill-fitting and shiny with wear, and his freckled face and round shock head of tan-coloured hair thrown into full relief by a big, square collar of coarse tatten lace laid out on his shoulders like a barber's ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... if you hear creaks and cracklings all over the house,' observed the landlord as I departed. 'The windows are loose and the doors ill-fitting. In such a storm as this they make noise enough to keep an army awake. The house is safe enough though and if ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... it till the very last day possible. Then he appeared, gaunt and miserable, in an ill-fitting blue serge suit which, in the wind, flapped about his lean body. He had the pathetic air of a lost child. On this occasion—Lady Auriol and he were lunching with me—she adopted a motherly attitude which afforded me both pleasure and amusement. She seemed bent on assuring him that the gaudy vestments ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... By then she was feeling that the word was a meaningless string of four letters, and the thing she supposed it stood for as fantastic and far-off as the recurring fragment of a dream, which seems so vivid in the dreaming and is a broken kaleidoscope of ill-fitting colours on awaking. She went to bed and slept soundly, better than she had ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... and to assume the character of a member of the lower classes—of a mountebank, if you please—you reflected that the care you bestow upon your person might betray you. You foresaw the impression that would be caused when the coarse, ill-fitting boots you wore were removed, and the officials perceived your trim, clean feet, which are as well kept as your hands. Accordingly, what did you do? You poured some of the water that was in the pitcher in your cell on to the ground and then dabbled ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... did the same, and the American girl, watching her, was at a loss to account for the reckless radiance of her smile. The sunshine flickered down between the branches on the sweet pink and white face, the pansy blue eyes, and long slender throat; it shone alike on the ill-fitting gown, the clumsy shoes, the carelessly arranged hair. Cornelia's golden eyes travelled up and down, down and up, in earnest, scrutinising fashion. She met Elma's glance with a shake of the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... further study of modern history will make clear that only in a slight degree and a few instances is religion a racial thing, and that there are laws and a science of spiritual as of bodily health. Once more, how ill-fitting are, say, the Indian word mukti (deliverance from further lives, the end of transmigrations) and the English word salvation, although mukti and salvation are often ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... been "a stout, clumsy little fellow, who never cared how he looked. He wore an ill-fitting suit, and his luggage tied up in a handkerchief was slung over his shoulder on a cane. Sometimes he carried a small valise and an old umbrella, the handle of which he converted into a fishing rod, for Turner dearly loved both hunting ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon



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