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Scrawl   Listen
verb
Scrawl  v. i.  To write unskillfully and inelegantly. "Though with a golden pen you scrawl."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books



... warmth as enabled me to hold a pen; and that obtained by rubbing the skin off, and by beating with my hands my shivering sides! Kneeling on the hoar moss on one knee, writing on the other, if the stiff scrawl could be called writing! My feet, by the time I had done, seeming to have taken root, and actually unable to support me for some minutes!—Love and rage then kept my heart in motion, [and only love and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... pens, pencils, soap, caps, a steamer trunk from the closet, several framed photographs, some college banners, and a score of other articles. On the very top of the heap was a fancy sofa pillow Nellie had given to Tom and to this was pinned a card, on which was written, in a disguised scrawl: ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... sank back into her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her hand ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... valley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker beneath ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... as a waiter at the hotel kept by Piney's father. He was holding a note in his hand, and staring intently at the house and garden. Seeing Cissy, he transferred his stare to her. Snatching the note from him, she tore it open, and read in Piney's well-known scrawl, "Dad won't let me come to you now, dear, but I'll try to slip out late to-night." Why should she want to come? She had said nothing about coming NOW—and why should her father prevent her? Cissy crushed the note between her fingers, and ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... hour which puts a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps blinking in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... apartment of Lola behind the Golden Cloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her when they took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little note for Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated that she had "ben true to him as his shadow," and that if he did no longer want her, she did not ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... offset by the various deceptions open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. It follows that freedom from ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... and worst of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat. You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad show. I have come in for a round five thousand, and am putting it into brass bedsteads. Sha'n't be able to get away until the end ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... will have had enough of my scrawl, and your mother wants to add something. She is in great force, and is gone prospecting to some Palazzo or other to tell me ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... come to King John, who ascended the throne after putting out his nephew's eyes with a pair of curling-irons, and who is the first English Sovereign who attempted to write his own name; for the scrawl is evidently something more than his mark, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and sprang to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Lepanto, the "barbarous pen" of Hopperus had been much more suitable for the work required. Scribbling Joachim in a war-galley, yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish capitan pacha, could have hardly felt less at ease than did the brilliant warrior thus condemned to scrawl and dissemble. While marching from concession to concession, he found the states conceiving daily more distrust, and making daily deeper encroachments. Moreover, his deeds up to the time when he seemed desirous to retrace his steps had certainly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been so very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference between that first portion so neatly penned—parti-coloured words showing where the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled and planned at every syllable—and ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... all night long, when she should have been attending to her duties,—which duties were to keep an eye on us lest we rob one another of the few pennies we might have under our pillows, or that we might not scrawl obscene verses on the whitewashed walls, in case we had succeeded in smuggling in a forbidden lead-pencil. For such offenses, and they happened only too often, we were all held equally guilty in the eyes of the sour, autocratic matron. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... the little journalist's scrawl. His whole face grew crimson, his eye shone as with madness. "Hulda! Hulda!" he cried, "the Idea works! God be thanked! English! Through the world! Hulda! Hulda!" He was bending over her, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... an aimless scrawl across the paper; for an instant he stared at his companion with blank eyes. Fortunately June Mason was too intent on the relighting of her cigarette to have any attention to spare for him; she went on talking as ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... seemed to bring to her mother a slight improvement, and Sally could again sometimes steal away with her slate and book, to sit alone on the big bowlder, and study. But, oftentimes, the print on the page, or the scrawl on the slate, became blurred. Nowadays, the tears came weakly to her eyes, and, instead of hating herself for them and dashing them fiercely away, as she would have done a year ago, she sat listlessly, and gazed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy even of her contempt. Then ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... out his hand eagerly; he had no reason to think such a thing, but none the less the conviction was upon him that Helen had written him. His arm through his horse's bridle, he struck a match and took into his hand a scrap of paper. As his peering eyes made out a sweeping, familiar scrawl, he felt a disappointment quite as unreasonable as had been his hope. It was unmistakably from the hand of John Carr, hastily written in lead pencil upon the inner side of an old envelope ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... Link by link they came upon the little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the unwelcome ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend's fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... whisking a sheet of paper from his coat-pocket. While the General read Chad's scrawl, the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... day he fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him. The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: the Autobiography ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother—just a quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it. That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know what I did—and you know—ME!" She pressed her clenched hands tightly against her ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... "this letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... promise. Now Phoebus exalted, sits high on his throne, Dividing the heav'ns, dividing my crown, Into poems and business, my skull's split in two, One side for the lawyers, and t'other for you. With my left eye, I see you sit snug in your stall, With my right I'm attending the lawyers that scrawl With my left I behold your bellower a cur chase; With my right I'm a-reading my deeds for a purchase. My left ear's attending the hymns of the choir, My right ear is stunn'd with the noise of the crier. My right hand's inditing these lines to your reverence, My left is indenting ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... paragraph with increasing excitement, now stopped his reading and began a hurried search for the "Coppy." He found it, on a separate sheet. It was written in pencil in Hapgood's neat, exact handwriting and was, compared to Mr. Ginn's labored scrawl, very easy to read. And this ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and writing would pass muster nowhere else, or casual visitors from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner

... pad, and watched him feebly scrawl a "T" and what might have been an "o"—and a haggling "m"; and then the pencil dropped. He looked so strange, he scarcely breathed; and frightened, Charley darted into the other room where his ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... crowning reward of all his sufferings and all his love! There was the letter, evidently undictated, with its errors of orthography, and in the child's rough scrawl; the serpent's tooth pierced to the heart, and left ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... on me with your white pencil," she would say, offering her dark cheek to Reuby, who would scrawl hieroglyphics all over ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... gazed in ecstasy, silent till she suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out, "tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of her father—therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... fourteen, was no better than very vulgar: reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover that, even in a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... that is not legible; and have a whole Bundle of Letters in Womens Hands that are full of Blots and Calumnies, insomuch that when I see the Name Caelia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at the Bottom of a Scrawl, I conclude on course that it brings me some Account of a fallen Virgin, a faithless Wife, or an amorous Widow. I must therefore inform these my Correspondents, that it is not my Design to be a Publisher ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... known to live a lifetime on the joy of one day. Her eyes fell again on the mantelpiece, on Hagar's unopened letters. At first her eyes wandered over the writing on the uppermost envelope mechanically, then a painful recognition came into them. She had seen that writing before, that slow sliding scrawl unlike any other, never to be mistaken. It turned her sick. Her fingers ran up to the envelope, then drew back. She felt for an instant that she must take it and open it as she stood there. What had the writer of that letter to do with George Hagar? She ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker

... panic, I snatched up the paper. Vic had said in his note, that he would leave another note for me here. This was it, for in a bold scrawl at the top was my name. And in hardly decipherable script, below, was ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... Protestants to do no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... and I found out from one of the servants. Sharp found an envelope under the door. It contained a five-dollar bill, and on it was written in a scrawl, ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer

... sight without once turning his head, and Kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... gad, the inside of it didn't look right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless Guardian ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note from Selma—a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... you and Miss Temple should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, here and I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... by way of answer, placed in his hand a paper, and seemed anxiously to expect the consequences which were to ensue. Mr. Herries looked it over with the same equanimity as before, and then continued, 'And were such a scrawl as this presented to me in my own house, I would throw it into the chimney, and Mr. Faggot upon the top ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting beneath ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I forget) ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the bedroom softly and picked up the sheets. There are two communications, one in a large scrawl written by a woman—I believe, it is Penelope's mother. The other is in a small regular hand with quick powerful strokes, evidently a man's writing. There! You see the handwriting is ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... scene I had witnessed at the breakfast-table, necessarily interested me very much and I could not help giving it a look. I saw that it was inscribed with Hebraic-looking characters as unlike as possible to the scrawl of ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... never had but one letter before in his life, and that was a little boyish scrawl from Clarence, and no wonder he opened the big envelope timidly. The contents began, "Know all men by these presents," and here Wilbert looked again into the envelope to see where the presents it spoke of ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honour of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school; observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... her hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... copy of the family arms. Everybody has got to having arms now-a-days. (She points to the indescribable scrawl over the mantelpiece.) It was got through Herald King, of London, who they say keeps her Majesty's slippers and the great seal of State. We were very exact, you see. Yes, sir-we were very exact. Our vulgar ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a "spirit message," such as are delivered at seances of spiritualists for a ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... the Niger on the 27th of June. You must excuse this hasty scrawl, as it is only meant to let you know that I am still alive and going forward in my journey. Please to let Mrs. Dickson ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... the last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... Aren't you cold? You are. Come over here and we'll have some tea and work it out together." And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination of the penciled scrawl which went for ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... or assisted hand must depend largely upon the relative force, exercised by the joint hands. The difficulty in writing arises from the antagonizing motion of one hand upon the other, which is likely to produce an unintelligible scrawl, having little or none of the ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... that he half expected to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by a very ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... and we need not think that lack of learning prevented any of the Pilgrims from imbibing both the letter and spirit of the Book. Those who could write were masters of a fine, flowing script that shames our modern scrawl, as is well testified by the Patent of the Plymouth Colony—the oldest state document in New England—as well as by the final will and various deeds of Peregrine White, and many others. The small, stiff baby shoes which encased the infant ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... ware, and tried, As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room; With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed, Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside, And then in solemn accent spoke their doom, "His majesty is very far from well." Then each to work with his specific fell; ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... seemed to have a miserable set on board, amongst others, a worthy pair from Havana, who had just come out of prison, having been accused of murdering a negro. The wind continues contrary. I shall fold up this sea-scrawl, and write no more till we reach ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... like that," answered Pierre. "There were letters also. Two of them were full of harsh words, and these were signed with the scrawl." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor of Sunchildston, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... proud ignorance Learning call? We oddly Plato's paradox make good, Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all; Remembrance is our treasure and our food; Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools: For learning's mighty treasures look Into that deep grave, a book; Think that she there does all her treasures hide, And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since she died; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... Burke, taking it up again. "Not even the civility to write with his own hand!—only his signature to the scrawl—looks as if it was written by a drunken man, does not it, Mr. Evans?" said she, showing the letter to Lord Colambre, who immediately recognized the writing of Sir ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... longer with a blessing. You have become a woman, and the mistress of a house. Still I cannot think of you otherwise than as my younger sister. I have brought you up to womanhood, I taught you your letters; but now when I see your writing I am ashamed to send this scrawl. But of what use to be ashamed? My day is over; were it not so how should I be in this condition? What condition?—it is a thing I cannot speak of to any one; should I do so there will be sorrow and shame; yet if I do not tell some one of my heart's ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For in thy lonely and lovely stream An image ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... sweeping along, bearing with them the tail of some thunder cloud—mingling their sounds with a falling tile from the roofs, or a broken chimney-pot. The officer in vain endeavoured to hold open the passports while he inscribed his name; and just as the last scrawl was completed, the lantern went out. Muttering a heavy curse upon the weather, he thrust them in upon us en masse, and, banging the door to, called out to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy. Can'st not read it? cried ahab. give it me, man. aye, aye it's but a dim scrawl; —what's this? As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship. Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, Mr. Har—yes, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... Stretched in abandon at my feet, the while, He fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, NEVER, oh!' And then they tell about a splendid beau - A lovely hat—a charming dress, and send ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... numerous—vagrants who cannot go abroad without casting shame on the country which bred them; whose vulgarity causes offence in church and picture-gallery; who cannot see a monument or a statue without desiring to chip off a fragment, or at least scrawl their ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... inscription especially struck me. It was very rude, and almost obliterated, for seventeen hundred years had passed over it. It was a husband's lamentation over a dead wife: "O Sophronia! dear Sophronia! thou mayest live?—Thou shalt live!" How eloquently did that rough, faded scrawl, over a long-forgotten grave, speak of the human fear that perhaps his wife was lost to him for ever—"Thou mayest live?" and of the noble faith that triumphed over it—"Thou shalt live!" Nothing affects and astonishes one more in these inscriptions than this calm, assured confidence that ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... wrote my sighs, and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... the note there and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... able to render any service to the St. George, even in any way whatever, risk the Cressy as much as I would. I desired them all to consult and let me know their opinion in writing, which they did in the accompanying hasty scrawl: No. 1, delivered about ten o'clock, and No. 2, about quarter before eleven. Their sentiments and opinion being the same as my own on the subject, namely, that we could not be of any service to the St. George or to any person on board, whatever might be her fate under the existing ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... in a neat, pretty little hand, which of itself seemed to reprove the student's awkward scrawl. He turned then to his own studies, which he was pursuing in a tattered volume of Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Common Law. He did not get on very fast with this book, and sometimes he wondered what bearing it could have on the practice ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... I have made all inquiries, and greatly fear that this work of ancient art has been mislaid. I labour besides under another perplexity, not unconnected with the first. Pray excuse the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scrawl, one cherished miniature, one faded floweret, etc., etc.? I can't believe it, Cousin," and he shook ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... that I have known this lady since she was a child. There were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie's father was the boss of the Joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick. It was he who invented that writing, which would pass as a child's scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it. Well, Elsie learned some of our ways; but she couldn't stand the business, and she had a bit of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got away to London. She had been ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the bed, she went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk. When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her. Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Choephoroe of AEschylus. I dreamt a dream about your being before Parnassus upon your trial for sedition and contumacy. I thought Thalia, Clio, &c. addressed you. Their speeches shall be nonsensified into rhyme, and shall be part of some other scrawl from your ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... to confirm Jaffery's last statement, here is a bit of a scrawl from Liosha—her complete account of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his tables ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... reading the letter twice. "What will he say when he hears that Larry is missing? If Larry doesn't show up, it will break his heart, and it will break mine, too!" And he brushed away the tears that sprang up in spite of his efforts to keep them down. Then he turned to the heavy, twisted scrawl from ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... same time they realized just as well as anything it must be so, else Elmer would not be smiling and frowning as he deciphered the meaning of the scrawl. As all the boys knew, Hen Condit was one of the poorest writers in the Hickory Ridge High School. It may be remembered that in speaking of his other note some of them brought this fact forward, stating that a teacher had once declared the boy well named, since his efforts looked like "hen-tracks" ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... composition of Lingua franca, or corrupt Spanish, of unintelligible jargon, consisting of many words quite unintelligible to the Africans, whether Negroes or Moors, or others. The language of this document, although it has some Arabic words in it, is worse, if possible, than the scrawl in which it is written; neither is it a correct translation of the English which precedes it. But purporting to be a letter issued from the accredited servants of the King of the English, it is certainly a disgrace to the country from whence it issues, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... letter was one addressed to Mrs. Orme by Peleg Peterson, and a portion of the scrawl was ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them both, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... there was in the letters; Deena's had three pages of pretty handwriting; Stephen's six of closely written scrawl. In Deena's the ideas barely flowed to the ink; in Stephen's they flowed so fast they couldn't get themselves written down—he used contractions, he left out whole words; he showed the interest he felt in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... got the plate thoroughly coated and set, lay the matter to be transferred on the plate, and rub it gently all over on the back; now raise it up, and it will be transferred on to the wax on the plate. Now take needles of a different thickness, and scrawl all over the wax, following the lines of the engraving. Having got the picture all traced out, pour upon it some weak acid if you use zinc, which is too soft to print many from, therefore it is better to use copper or steel. If you use copper, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... excitement and delight. "I have a pencil in my pocket. What shall I do for paper?" She looked eagerly round and spied a small piece which lay among the brushwood. With a cry of joy she picked it out. It was very coarse and very dirty, but she managed to scrawl a few lines upon it, describing her situation and asking for aid. "I will write the address upon the back," she said. "When you get to Bedsworth you must buy an envelope and ask the post-office people to copy the address on ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot woven about him by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... inscription has emerged. Instead, we have proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. No such letter was used in Roman Britain, ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... not do. I would not enter into correspondence with Lancelot, and I would not go any more to Master Davies's house. Lancelot wrote again and yet again to me. But I served the second letter as I had served the first, and the third as I had served the second. I did, indeed, scrawl some few lines of reply to this last letter, bidding him somewhat bluntly to leave me in peace; that my bed had been made for me, and that I must needs lie upon it, and that I did not wish to be vexed in my slumber. It was a rude and foolish letter, I make ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... colonel, presumably, knew so very little; of which, as post commander, Plume had yet to tell him! An orderly came running with a field glass and a scrap of paper. Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife's inseparable companion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could make out, and "affreusement" something, but it was enough. The orderly supplemented: "Leece, sir, says the lady is ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... this pocket-hole I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl Meant not for me," at length said I; "I glanced thereat, and let it lie: The words were three - ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... next four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. There is no sequence. In this book and in The Coloured Lands may be seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life—and it all took place in his early twenties. From the seed-thoughts here, Orthodoxy and the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Indian. Colonel Howell, having heard the explanation of the finding of the letter, without any hesitation and evidently without any qualms of conscience, drew out the enclosure. The letter was an illiterate scrawl. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... puppies, and the poor, his drop; Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the church or state: Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men: Flight ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... almost with tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to Fred ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... But I am running on at a tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that I am ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... phrenoia^. writer, scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... own work at this early period we possess probably nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano. Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be a rifacimento from the master's hand at a subsequent ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... the men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... fool, Thought to scrawl "Duke of Reichstadt" o'er my name. But hold the paper up before the sun: You'll ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... not read, or the illegible, meaningless ink scrawl upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused his suspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, understood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, not elaborate—a mere stage property, nothing more. But yet he gave it ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to scrawl a short note last night before the mail went. But I wrote to Papa the day before we ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing more to ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. [Footnote: See ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... pitiful little scrawl through the first time on the store porch. Then, tear-blinded, she started down the hill toward the old wharf at the inlet where she had first ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... they cannot otherwise be had for any price. There are quite brains enough, and there is quite sentiment enough, among the gentlemen of England to answer all the purposes of England: but if you so train your youths of the richer classes that they shall think it more gentlemanly to scrawl a figure on a bit of note paper, to be presently rolled up to light a cigar with, than to draw one nobly and rightly for the seeing of all men;—and if you practically show your youths, of all classes, that they will be held gentlemen, for babbling with a simper in Sunday pulpits; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Scrawl" :   cacography, scrawler, handwriting, write, hand



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