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Squeamish   Listen
adjective
Squeamish  adj.  Having a stomach that is easily turned or nauseated; hence, nice to excess in taste; fastidious; easily disgusted; apt to be offended at trifling improprieties. "Quoth he, that honor's very squeamish That takes a basting for a blemish." "His muse is rustic, and perhaps too plain The men of squeamish taste to entertain." "So ye grow squeamish, Gods, and sniff at heaven."
Synonyms: Fastidious; dainty; overnice; scrupulous. See Fastidious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Squeamish" Quotes from Famous Books



... brushes, there hangs a rusty sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world. He is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read the sign. Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the praise. As I have not previously been aware that any of his profession ever came to general fame except the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, I have squinted sharply at him to see if by chance it might be he, but there are no marks even of a distant kinship. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... when he goes bedward, must have his reflections nightmarish! It seems, from such rigs, that our biggest Big Wigs are scarcest to govern a parish. MCDOUGALL again, is agog to restrain all that gives his soul pain—it's a squeamish one!— He thinks he's a stayer as Jabberwock-slayer, mere Angry Boy he, not a Beamish One! These Oracles windy do raise such a shindy, and kick such a doose of a dust up, One would think without them we were wrong stern and stem, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... admitted at once that many of Maupassant's earlier short-stories have to do with the lower aspects of man's merely animal activity. Maupassant had an abundance of what the French themselves called "Gallic salt." His humor was not squeamish; it delighted in dealing with themes that our Anglo-Saxon prudery prefers not to touch. But even at the beginning this liking of his for the sort of thing that we who speak English prefer to avoid in print never led him to put dirt where dirt was not a necessary element of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... on when they'd got them. They probably knew that the ancient chalices, reliquaries, and that sort of thing would fetch big prices, sold privately to collectors—especially to American collectors, who, as everybody knows, are not at all squeamish or particular about the antecedents of property so long as they secure it. I should say that Baxter, acting for his partner in crime, stored these things, and has waited for a favourable opportunity to resume possession ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... have possessed a constitution of iron to withstand thus, in boyhood, the hardships of the life of a galley-slave, which as a rule broke down the endurance of strong men in a very few years. Morgan presents us with a description of him at this period which in these more squeamish days can certainly not be set down in its entirety: suffice it to say that he suffered all his days from what is known as "scald-head," and that personal filthiness was one of his ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... He had ships enough. But of what use ships and men if there was no food for them nor money to buy it? He tried to borrow, he tried to beg, he tried what in a less glorious cause a plain man would call stealing. King Richard came not of a squeamish race, and would have sold anything to any buyer, pawned his crown or taken another man's to get the worth of a company's pay out of it. Fines, escheats, reliefs, forfeitures, wardships, marriages—he heaped exaction on exaction, with mighty little result. When his ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... said Sir John, his blue eyes glaring. "On Clo Wildairs's name was set no embargo, God knows. Is there a reason why a man should be squeamish of a sudden over my Lady Dunstanwolde's? 'Tis but the difference of a ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... consequence of this! While she was, and constantly professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the calendar of polished society, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species being exempt, for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to the nature ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... called upon to express your own opinions. All you have to do is to express mine and keep your body and soul together comfortably. You can't do that now and the two'll part company before long unless you alter. You were not so squeamish last night at the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... carry on with this game for all he's worth, and that I believe is not much." He had intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner tete-a-tete with him—"It's better to get him over to Tuam," thought he, "and try and make him see rason when he's sober: nothing's too hot or too bad for him, when he's mad ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... of which is made and provided to cover the individual needs of such impecunious officers. The matter is well understood throughout the land, and is looked upon as an established institution, something in which squeamish scruples are not allowed to interfere with concrete requirements. No German maiden consciously feels the shame of being thus made purely an object of barter and sale. She is to the manner bred. But of course good, fat dowries are often taken by officers, together with ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... Some time the squeamish sister watched the spot; At length the other, who'd her wishes got, The station took; the lab'rer tried to please The second as the first, but less at ease; So many favours fell not to her share, And only treble comfort ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... away as Gordon and the other cop went to work, but most of them weren't squeamish. When it was over, the two picked up their whimpering captive. Gordon pocketed the revolver with his free hand. "Walk, O'Neill!" he ordered. "Your legs ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... given a good deal to avoid this visit, but seeing no way to escape she stepped from the carriage under the keen scrutiny of her hostess and walked up the rickety steps with something of the same squeamish care she would have shown on ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... wa'n't no coward. I never see ther time Dick w'd refuse ter fight if ther other feller had some show, an' he wa'n't squeamish about holdin' up a train er runnin' off a bunch o' cattle, but I always hear him say thet he didn't take no stock in plain, ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... said Bell, lifting his hand. "I feel squeamish now. I say! Haven't you changed the lamps, or ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... laughing, "fast" eyes at Susan and away. "The best I can—for the house—and for myself. . . . I talk to you because I know you're a lady and because I don't want to see you thrown down. A woman that's living quietly at home—like a lady—she can be squeamish. But out in the world a woman can't afford to be—no, nor a man, neither. You don't find this set down in the books, and they don't preach it in the churches—leastways they didn't when I used to go to church. But it's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance—that peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... you to do anything," rejoins the vaqueano. "If you're so squeamish about giving offence to him you call your father's friend, you needn't take any part in the matter, or at all compromise yourself. Only stand aside, and allow the law I've just spoken of ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... the slightest apparent effect. Probably two million squeamish mosquitoes were driven away by the disgust of our medicaments, but what good did that do us when eight million others were not so particular? At the last we hung bandanas under our hats, cut fans of leaves, and stumbled on through a most miserable day until we ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... knows the name of each member of the colony; when they came and how often they have gone away, and the Lord help you if your residence isn't right! That's the one thing that the Judge is squeamish about, and as Mrs. Judge keeps tab for him, there is no use trying to fudge. If you don't come up before the Judge in six months and one week, she inquires of your landlady the reason for your delay. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... man useful!" he reflected. "There is an element of danger in the boy's presence in New York; but it will go hard if I can't get rid of him! Tim Bolton is unexpectedly squeamish, but there are others to whom I can apply. With gold everything is possible. It's time matters came to a finish. My uncle's health is rapidly failing— the doctor hints that he has heart disease—and the fortune for which I have been waiting so long will soon ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... was placed frankly on the bill of fare to-day as a ration for troops and civilians alike, but many of the latter refused to take it. Hunger will probably make them less squeamish, but one cannot help sympathising with the weakly, who are already suffering from want of proper nourishment, and for whom there is no alternative. Market prices have long since gone beyond ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... that he was always drunk in the evening; and even an archbishop—an Irish archbishop, it is true—whose jovial habits broke down his constitution. Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats, and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned, iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public school in the old (and not so very ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the old jibe ran, and in this estimate of the Poole man's character the gangs fully concurred. They knew him well and liked him little, so when bent on pressing him they adopted no squeamish measures, but very wisely "trusted to the strength of their right arms for it." Some of their attempts to take ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... think of growing delicate or squeamish plants. Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature come into conflict Nature wins every time. Nature has decreed that certain plants shall be hardy, and therefore suitable ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am not squeamish, but I was frightened directly the oath had escaped my lips. I felt as if I had created something horrible which I could not annihilate, and that it would wait for me and do me some mischief. The dog kept closely to my heels for about a mile and I could not make ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... that there is not the faintest trace in the play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodied in Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold upon her husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas.] ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... any thing so mortifying? to be refused by old Mother Damnable!—with such parts and address,—and the little squeamish devils, to dislike me for a name, a sound.—O my cursed name! that it was something I could be revenged on! if it were alive, that I might tread upon it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit it out—for it sticks in my throat ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Monsieur says, has no charity. He drives clean, wholesome smoke out of the hotel, and stinks the place up with as nasty a chemical mixture as disgusting science ever invented. He reminds me of a Toronto professor of anatomy who wouldn't allow the poor squeamish medicals to smoke in the dissecting room, because, he said, one bad smell was better than two. If I had my way with Bulky I'd smoke him blue in the face, if for nothing but to drown ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... of these two people is pointed out respectfully to the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... dreaded the spot as one of evil omen, and commenced to wait for Chrysis to lead me on my way. I took a short stroll and had just seated myself where I had sat the day before, when she came under the trees, leading a little old woman by the hand. "Well, Mr. Squeamish," she chirped, when she had greeted me, "have you recovered your appetite?" In ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... mental torture, while Dick waited in the garden for his traitorous friend. The innocent cause of the tragedy was sweetly and calmly replying to the questions of the marriage-ritual, while Jack was looking, as Allen said to himself, "darned squeamish." ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... the passage which caused some good-natured discussion nine years ago, between the contributor and the editor. Perhaps I was squeamish not to have been, willing to print this matter at that time. Some persons, no doubt, will adopt that opinion, but as both President and author have long ago met on the other side of criticism and magazines, we will leave the subject to their decision, they being most interested in the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... food they were certainly not particular or squeamish. They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef of the musk ox, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... in dismay. But Mrs. Thaddeus was thoroughly of her husband's mind. What he had been, as she knew from his letters, and what she found him now, passed through her mind in a flash. She was modest enough, but not squeamish; and the honest face of "Cobbler" Horn was one which no woman, under the circumstances, need have hesitated to kiss. So, in a moment, to the amusement of the crowd, to the huge delight of the grateful Thaddeus, and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... Though by no means squeamish, on the testimony of his nose and ears P. Sybarite then and there concluded that he would have to have become exceedingly blase indeed to find ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... of a dizzy and squeamish feeling, isn't it?" explained Polly, looking at her companion. Then for the first time since they emerged from the tunnel, she noticed ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... There were trades which the employers kept going for local reasons—these must be hunted out and brought to a standstill, even at the cost of increasing unemployment. They were making energetic preparations for war, and it was not the time to be squeamish about their weapons. Pelle was in his element. This was something better than ruining a single shoemaker, even if he was the biggest in the city! He was rich in ideas, and never wavered in carrying them into execution. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... keep it dark if I were you. Kishineff is a back number, and we don't take much stock in the new massacres. Still, we're a bit squeamish—— ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... spite of their belief in mysterious powers which control the destinies of men and nations, they did not think it decent to abandon public affairs to Providence; nor did they avert their gaze from them as too mundane for the squeamish intellectual to handle and turn them over to the tender mercies of the ignorant and less scrupulous demagogue or doctrinaire. Their public affairs were no more interesting than ours: they were indeed considerably less interesting—unless we are prepared to argue that the election of generals ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... devil has come over you,' cried Toussac, turning suspicious eyes upon my protector. 'I never knew you squeamish before, and certainly you were not backward in the affair of the man from Bow Street. This fellow has our secret, and he must either die, or we shall see him at our trial. What is the sense of arranging a plot, and then at the last moment turning a man loose who will ruin us all? Let us ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with good sense and good taste, should be actually drawn. I confess a leaning to the American school, but how far I am influenced by education it would not be easy for me to say myself. Foreigners affirm that we are squeamish, and that we wound delicacy oftener by the awkward attempts to protect it, than if we had more simplicity. There may be some truth in this, for though cherishing the notions of my youth, I never belonged to the ultra school at home, which, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... I am no squeamish man, or I should have passed a wretched life. The man who is perpetually travelling must bear with him a pliant nature that will adapt itself to any society, to various codes of morals, habits of thought, rules of conduct, and varieties of temperament. I can make myself at home in most ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... is a dismal time anyway, and teeth will chatter, no matter how brave you feel! It is a squeamish, sickly, choky time,—a winter morning before the sun is up; and you simply cannot eat breakfast when you look round the table and see every chair filled,—even the five-year-old fellow is on hand,—and know that a long, weary time is ahead of ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of something to write about, but because some circumstance that has happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it, and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no testimonies ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... an honest-hearted fellow, with affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)—if he led a sad riotous life, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... CROMWELL we are fallen on evil times! There was a day when England had a wide room For honest men as well as foolish kings: But now the uneasy stomach of the time Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us Seek out that savage clime, where men as yet Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide, Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; Give us but that, and what need we to fear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... are those paid for by loan-sharks, clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. The New York "Herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. It also refuses fortune-tellers the hospitality of its columns, though it is not so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies and patent medicines. How many papers still publish the advertisement of Mrs. Laudanum's soothing syrup for babies? When you remember that the proprietary medicine concerns have been accustomed ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... the word you're not that at all, sir. You're a great builder. You've done more for the Northwest than any man living. You couldn't have done it if you had been squeamish. I hold the end justifies the means. What you've got is yours because you've won it. Men who do a great work for the public are ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... an hour. Suddenly I heard a tramping in the bushes, and in breaks my little gray mule. Thinks I them 'Rapahoes ain't smart; so tied her to grass. But the Injuns had scared the beaver so, I stays in my camp, eating my lariat. Then I begun to get kind o' wolfish and squeamish; something was gnawing and pulling at my inwards, like a wolf in a trap. Just then an idea struck me, that I had been there before ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... will call this description low; I do not envy them their gentility, and have always observed through life (as, to be sure, every other GENTLEMAN has observed as well as myself) that it is your parvenu who stickles most for what he calls the genteel, and has the most squeamish abhorrence for what is frank and natural. Let us pass at once, however, as all the world must be pleased, to a recital of an affair which occurred in the very best circles of society, as they are called, viz, my next ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... knaw? An' what matter if he is? Your business is with the bees, not him. An' you've got no quarrel with him because that Blanchard have. After what Will done against you, you needn't be so squeamish as to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... to give great big Christmas dinners. We are all day long getting up entertainments for those dull sort of people. I often think they are not a bit grateful, and after being at a school like this I really feel quite squeamish about them." ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... all free and easy and nobody took offense at anything said or done. In fact if one were squeamish about such things Sanguinetti's was no place for him or her. One found one's self talking and laughing with the people about as if they were old friends. It made no difference how you were dressed, nor how dignified ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... performance. But most even of these will repay a visit, if not for the sake of the actors, for that of the audience. Despised by the fashionable and pleasure-seeking, they afford a rich field to the observant man. He must not, it is true, be squeamish, and fear to let the unsavoury reek of tabac-de-caporal, or the odours of potato brandy and logwood wine come betwixt the wind and his nobility. Neither must he dread contact with the mechanic's blouse, with the cotton gown ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... he says, "that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in '60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which Smithfield ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... Mr. Bennet. "What, has she frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... have any relations with him," answered my friend; "but we must not be squeamish respecting our instruments in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation—even for a private inquiry agent. He is little ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... know, require the tight rein of vigilant discipline. I intimated as much to Dorrance when he asked my consent to your engagement. But this is his lookout, not mine. What I began to say was that, in MY opinion, he would have acted more sensibly had he not encouraged your squeamish repugnance to talking of your early ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... of Saxon blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus from the valley of the Mississippi will answer to him of the Seven Hills: 'In all grave questions, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,—cut off his skirts, Sir! cut ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... tones. Sammy in the next room had heard the conversation up to this point, but now only an occasional word reached her ears. Gibbs seemed to be urging some action, and her father was as vigorously protesting. "I tell you, Jim, hit's th' only safe way. You didn't use t' be so squeamish." Several times the old shepherd was mentioned, and also the stranger whom Wash had seen that evening. And once, the trembling girl heard Young Matt's name. At length the guest rose to go, and Mr. Lane walked with him to the gate. Even after the big man was mounted, the conversation still ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... would be at rest. "It was a consummation devoutly to be wished." Why? He knew well enough. Michael had proposed the day, but she asked for time, and he refrained from further importunity. His love and delicacy forbade his giving her one moment's pain. Abraham was less squeamish. His long experience told him that some good reason must exist for such a wish to dwell in the young bosom of the blooming widow. It was unnatural and foreign to young blood. It could be nothing else than the fear of parting with her wealth—of placing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... thing; he bears it away. The hour has struck, the deed is done; irrevocable, it takes its place upon the inexpugnable record. He has stolen, and there is no power in heaven or earth to change that little fact. We are grown squeamish in these modern days, and no longer brand a thief with heated iron. No letter will appear, seared on his shoulder or his hand, but is he less the thief for that? He himself has done the branding, and Eternity ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... right mind"—such as it was—while the Laird roosted on her couch in that attic bedroom and was— to us a Tennysonianism—mouthed and mumbled. Even New York's "four hundred" might have felt a little squeamish at seeing this pair of platonic turtle doves hid away in an obscure corner of naughty Paris in puris naturalibus even if "there is nothing so ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... superannuated sergeant and his wife; of whom the one was partially deaf and the other totally. Also the regulars had marched out but three days before, and the apartments—the dormitories especially—were not in a condition to propitiate the squeamish. Also No. 17 Company of the Royal Artillery had included a notable proportion of absent-minded gunners who, in the words of a latter-day bard, had left a lot of little things behind them. Lieutenant Clogg, on being introduced to his quarters, openly and with excuse bewailed the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... through: It comes out now in sound and emphasis, and the modest Pen is as prone and ready to write it. So that I once more affirm, that if it were not done in respect to his Lady, who, no doubt, peruses him extreamly, it must naturally be the effect of Hypcrisie, for, to be squeamish in one place and not in another is Ridiculous, especially when one word is Innocent in its kind, and makes the sense, and the other when us'd makes it ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... "let us live forever, and raise our level gradually." The best thing about our "inferiors" to-day is that they are as tough as nails, and physically and morally almost as insensitive. Utopianism would see them soft and squeamish, while militarism would keep their callousness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, needed by "the service," and redeemed by that from the suspicion of inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... failed, and brute force when they dared. It was like beating mad hounds from off their worry. What established order at last was that King rolled up his sleeves and began, so that eagerness gave place to wonder. The "Hills" are not squeamish in any one particular; so that the fact that the cave became a shambles upset nobody. The surgeon's thrill that makes even half-amateurs oblivious of all but the work in hand, coupled with the desperate need of winning this first trick, made King horror-proof; and nobody waiting ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... one it is to Shakespeare's as the Thames at London Bridge is to the Thames at Eton: the atmosphere of Smithfield is not more different from the atmosphere of the playing-fields; and some, too delicate of nose or squeamish of stomach, may prefer Cuckoo Weir to Shoreditch. But undoubtedly the phantoms of Shallow and Mrs. Quickly which put in (so to speak) a nominal reappearance in the Merry Wives of Windsor are comparatively as poor and thin if set over against the full rich outlines of Rabbi Busy ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... said Lady Delacour, to Miss Portman when they met in the morning. "I have heard, my dear Belinda, and I believe, that the passion of love, which can endure caprice, vice, wrinkles, deformity, poverty, nay, disease itself, is notwithstanding so squeamish as to be instantaneously disgusted by the perception of folly in the object beloved. I hope friendship, though akin to love, is of a more robust constitution, else what would become of me? My folly, and my visions, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... to her word, and not squeamish. Riatt found it rather amusing to wander at her side, dressing her in imagination in every garment that the windows so frankly displayed, and answering with real interest her constant inquiry: "Do you think that would become me? Would you like me in that? Do ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... displeasing, My Winifreda, move your care; Let naught delay the heavenly blessing, Nor squeamish pride, nor gloomy fear. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... justification in that attitude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They'd all have to ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... houses before the court.... Nor can we in the second place find among the foregoing records proof of the necessity of the transfer to the Registrar General of the judicial powers.... As a matter of fact, witnesses do not seem to have been at all squeamish in divulging repulsive details in open Court, nor, on the other hand, do the magistrates ever seem to have shown too exacting a disposition as to the nature or amount of the evidence they required to sustain convictions; ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... everywhere Were sickened and dismayed; The Turk, not squeamish as a rule, No special glee betrayed; And even Mr. BERNARD SHAW Failed to defend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various

... for the unfeeling, the falsely refined, The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind, And the small critic wielding his delicate pen, That I sing of old Adam, the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... "I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault. Before my time, but still—I'll stick to ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... Sam, using a phrase which presumably has a rational meaning, as it is so often employed by reasonable people. "It doesn't pay to be squeamish. The squeamish men don't make good soldiers. I've seen enough to learn that. They hesitate to obey orders, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... began, "you don't know what you lost by being over squeamish. Such a perfect jewel-box of a room, with the tiniest single bed of solid mahogany! Isn't it queer that Arthur should have locked it up, and isn't it fortunate for us that Mrs. Johnson found that rusty old key which must have originally belonged to the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... "I trust that these few trees will supply us with sufficient food if we search for it, and I am not very squeamish ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... royal drawing-room, the senate,—what but fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport—hundreds at a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... respectable *ir repitiendo, etc., to keep repeating, etc. jefe del despacho, manager llevarse bien, to get on well together lograr, to contrive, to attain machacar, to hammer, to insist mandato, order, injunction melindroso, squeamish, very particular multa, fine, penalty Noruego, Norwegian peligro, danger remolcar, to tow sacar en limpio, to make out isanto y bueno! that is all very well sargento, sergeant transportar, to transport, to convey tul bordado, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... squeamish. I have always let my children read what they would. I have never made a mystery of the relations of the sexes, for I know the call of the unseen—the fascination lent by concealment, of discovery. I believe frankness to be a good thing. A mind that is startled or shocked by the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene's pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... familiar with mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States—our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of sex—is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... the office of Joseph Calvin and less liking for the scandal of that intimacy which arose when the rich litigants in the Judge's court crowded into Calvin's office for counsel. The Doctor wondered if he was squeamish about certain matters, merely because it was his own son-in-law who was the subject of the disquieting gossip connected with Calvin's practice in Van Dorn's court. Then there was the other matter. The Doctor could notice that the town was having its smile—not a malicious ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... "look alive. We've got to get the hold ready against cap'n gets back with the first batch. We're rid of the squeamish ones, I reckon. 'Fore they come in with their meat we'll be loaded; that is, s'posin' they ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... is something wrong—only suppose, I say," as the other shook his head impatiently. "If there is, it'll be on a big scale, and therefore the men who run it won't be over squeamish. Again, if there's anything, Miss Coburn knows about it. Oh, yes, she does," he repeated as Merriman would have dissented, "there is your own evidence. But if she knows about some large, shady undertaking, she undoubtedly may be in both difficulty and danger. At all events, as long as the chance ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... shepherd with the rest. I yield myself, if need there be; And yet I think, in equity, Each should confess his sins with me; For laws of right and justice cry, The guiltiest alone should die.' 'Sire,' said the fox, 'your majesty Is humbler than a king should be, And over-squeamish in the case. What! eating stupid sheep a crime? No, never, sire, at any time. It rather was an act of grace, A mark of honour to their race. And as to shepherds, one may swear, The fate your majesty describes, Is recompense less full than fair For ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... health, you mustn't say "Thanks," but "Tres humble servitoor." And when you yawn, you mustn't hold your hand before your mouth, because that isn't done any more among the gentry. And lastly, when you are in company, you mustn't be too squeamish, but leave your propriety a little to one side.—Listen, I forgot something: you must also get a lap-dog and love it like your own daughter, for that's fashionable. Our neighbor Arianke has a pretty dog that she might lend you till we can get one for ourselves. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... decks morning, noon, and evening; the most squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every constitutional lubber concluded he was ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... and will admire the energy with which he flings his wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castlereagh, Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all; and as for the Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man! And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who so bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Lady Eustace, and thought that therefore the peculiarly unpleasant task assigned to Lady Fawn need not be performed. Lady Fawn had not the advantage of living so much in the world as her daughter, and was oppressed by, perhaps, a squeamish delicacy. "I really could not tell him about her sitting and—and kissing the man. Could I, my dear?" "I couldn't," ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... have long to wait. Those plunderers will not be as squeamish as I.... Strange, now! From Armenian reminiscences I should have fancied myself as free from such tender weakness as any of my Canaanite-slaying ancestors.... And yet by some mere spirit of contradiction, I couldn't kill that ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... agreed that we were to start off next morning by the 7.10 train, and half an hour before that time saw me standing before the Columbus statue in the Piazza Acquaverdi. Weems was such a mighty squeamish little creature about the proprieties that I thought an old dunnage-sack would scandalize him, and so had purchased a drab portmanteau for my kit at the cost of half my remaining capital. I intended to have no more breezes with him if it could ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... you're getting squeamish!" he said. "The first thing you know you'll be as bad as Fletcher." There was a moment's silence. "What does he say ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... prude I had no idea that you would take it so seriously but Aunt Emma was so disappointed and spoke of the rejected suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity because of some squeamish notions on the subject of temperance, and so of course, my dear cousin, it was just like me to let my curiosity overstep the bounds of prudence, and inquire ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... settlement that would touch her, so I done it, and of all the corpses I ever put away she had the grandest look. It sorter staggered me till I thought at last it was maybe the rest that come to her after the pain of sinnin' had gone out of her body. But you'll not be so squeamish about the way folks look when they air dead after a while. We had one pastor's wife that helped lay out fourteen bodies. But that was the year of the epidemic," she concluded, leaning over to stretch the shroud sheet. Little did I think ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... him sensitive and irritable, but his natural generosity had kept him from becoming suspicious and mistrustful. This same false position was the cause of an utter inconsistency, which permeated his whole being. He was fastidiously accurate and horribly squeamish, tried to be cynical and coarse in his speech, but was an idealist by nature. He was passionate and pure-minded, bold and timid at the same time, and, like a repentant sinner, ashamed of his sins; he was ashamed alike of his timidity and his purity, and considered it his duty ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... never have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked God that Lorenzino had no such squeamish conscience. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... must crowd all into one grand mess Or mass; for should I stretch into detail, My Muse would run much more into excess, Than when some squeamish people deem her frail; But though a bonne vivante, I must confess Her stomach's not her peccant part; this tale However doth require some slight refection, Just to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... and ragged, in a cassock turned red with age, and covered with patches, surveyed the cabin with a squeamish look, and when he seated himself on the plush-covered lounge, he turned the skirt of the cassock as though afraid to ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... the pressure of that hard unaccommodating Actual, which has never consulted our taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we know, dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in the middle ages, and sees no shabbiness in the official trappings of classic processions: it gets squeamish when ideals press upon it as something warmly incarnate, and can hardly face them without fainting. Lying dreamily in a boat, imagining one's self in quest of a beautiful maiden's relatives in Cordova elbowed by Jews in the time of Ibn-Gebirol, all the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... squeamish, Andy P. Symes, and it was true that he was "out for the stuff," but the woman's bald statement shocked him. Upon a few occasions Symes had been surprised to find that he had standards of conduct, unsuspected ideals, and somehow, her attitude toward her profession outraged his ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... as dangerous as venomous serpents, and, after what you saw on board that barque, you do not think we need be squeamish about ridding the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... Barry in his essay on Anna Zwanziger—tells us that some of the methods of torture employed by criminal women are so horrible that they cannot be described without outraging the laws of decency. Less squeamish than Lombroso or Mr Barry, I gather aloud that the tortures have to do with the organs of generation. But male savages in African and American Indian tribes have a punishment for adulterous women which ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... this majority had been elected on other issues, and that the proper constitutional course was to consult the people, mattered not to him. Here was a big thing to do, and he was not the man to be squeamish on a point of constitutional correctness. He held his majority together by the strong hand. In 1866 he succeeded in getting a resolution passed, authorizing the sending of 'delegates to arrange with the Imperial government a scheme of union which will ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... not exist in the Martians. They were heads—merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... by English Whigs that he was known in France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very cardinals had shown their abhorrence of his cruelty; and that even Queen Christina, who had little right to be squeamish about bloodshed, had turned away from him with loathing. He had recently held a command in Savoy. The Irish regiments in the French service had formed part of his army, and had behaved extremely well. It was therefore ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him. But he sees the human heart Of God meanwhile, and in God's hand has weighed Your squeamish and emasculate crusade Against the grim dominion ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... relief, the author would wish to answer, that the Almighty frequently accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance of the old apple-woman on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... what was it? Not a very large sum, a sum which when put to it, and with time before him, he could so easily supply; and as for any other consideration, it was really, when you came to think of it, a quite justifiable expedient, not to be condemned except by squeamish persons, and which being never known, could do no harm in the world. He had not harmed anybody by what he had done. Tozer, who was quite able to pay it over and over again, would never know of it; and in what respect, he asked himself, was it ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... steaming at 20 knots in close formation without lights. The night was as black as the wolf's mouth, and the rapidly rising wind cut the tops off the short seas and sent them flying over the bridge in constant showers of spray. Moreover, the perpetual pitching and rolling soon gave our friend a squeamish and altogether nasty sensation in the region of his waistcoat, and in ten minutes, by which time the water had found its way through his oilskins and was trickling merrily down the back of his neck, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... in a sailing vessel in 1851 and was five weeks on the voyage. My sister did not leave her bunk all the way over and I was squeamish myself, but I see the sailors drinking seawater every morning, so I joined them and was never sick a minute after. We brought our own food with us and it was cooked for us very well and brought to us hot. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... from an exact translation, but the idea and the spirit have been faithfully preserved. The "Mouchoir" was always a bit more squeamish than the average, rollicking trench journal, for it was issued by a group of medical service men who were almost all priests. Indeed, there were some issues that combined satire, puns, and piety in a terrifying manner. Its editors printed it in the cellar of the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... beef and ale? We have claret, I trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... and brown—dappled all over her face, but her nose, which has a red spot on it—lifts up a pair of lack-lustre peepers that look glazed like the round dull ground-glass lights let into the deck, suddenly wakes up squeamish, and says, 'Please, Sir, help me down; I feel so ill.' Well, you take her up in your arms, and for the first time in your life hold her head from you, for fear she will reward you in a way that ain't no matter, and she feels as soft ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the ticket. I have just returned from the Pacific coast and while I was there I did splendidly; everything I touched turned to gold, and now I have a good job on hand if you are not too squeamish to take it. I have just set up a tiptop restaurant and saloon, and I have some of the best merchants of the city as my customers, and I want a first rate clerk. You were always good at figures and if you will ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... company, and afterward a "star" under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... with a tray; a lady what was squeamish had been having her vittles on deck. Mr. Clive cotched up a basin o' pea soup what was too greasy for madam, and in a twink he sets it upside down on the cadet's head. Ay, 'twas a pretty pictur', the greasy yellow ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... the New Republic will not be squeamish, either, in facing or inflicting death, because they will have a fuller sense of the possibilities of life than we possess. They will have an ideal that will make killing worth the while; like Abraham, they will ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... sword, and faintly calling: "A basin please!" Two ruffians—I can call them, nothing else—paced the deck, smoking, and passed me every forty seconds. If there is a thing which tumbles a human being of a highly-strung nervous temperament over when he feels squeamish, it is the occasional whiff of a cigar. Then, added to the occasional whiff, were occasional catches of derogatory remarks, which came home to me as unpleasantly as did the tobacco: "A chap with a sword ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Martha. "Take no heed of her, the child has suffered much, she is weak and squeamish. Now I, although I believe that my death lies before me, I say, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... not ignorant that I have often shut my eyes upon certain affairs—. Enough; they must now testify their attachment for me. Why should they oppose the presentation of the comtesse? <Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!> they were not so squeamish in the days of madame de Pompadour." At these latter words I could not forbear laughing. La Vauguyon and de Richelieu left us and here the conversation terminated. The next morning they brought me a note from the duc de ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... Shepherds, a Poet can never raise Delight from such a Character. Her fault is too hateful to excite Pity in her Punishment; and too small to raise Joy in beholding bar Unfortunate. Besides that such a Joy were not proper for Pastoral. Of the same Nature is a Finical, or Squeamish Character, and many others, at first ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... she indulged any enthusiasm, in view of the approaching change, it was in the prospect of endless shirt-making, and in calculations about how cheaply (not how happily) she could enable her husband to live. She had no squeamish delicacy about allowing the world to know the scope and meaning of her arrangements, and all her friends participated in her visions of comfort and economy. False modesty was no part of her nature—and her sentiment could be reduced to an algebraic formula—excluding the "unknown quantities" ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... softer parts of your thigh, your funny bone, or your wrist, to keep you wide awake, and remind you of the good old rule of "grin and bear it;" but the ash-plant leaves no marks which are likely to offend the eyes of squeamish clients or ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... "Well, I'm squeamish about such things as that," said the major, looking even graver, "especially since this fire here. By the way, was much of ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... good one in his life, Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be "bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong. His new arrangement for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Chetney, when the noise had died away, "that I couldn't remain dead while my little brother was accused of murder. I had to do something. Family pride demanded it. Now, Arthur, as the younger brother, can't afford to be squeamish, but personally I should hate to have a brother of ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis

... passage, when, the wind shifting, blew directly in her teeth; so that they were obliged to haul upon a wind, and alter their course. The sea running pretty high at the same time, our hero, who was below in his cabin, began to be squeamish, and, in consequence of the skipper's advice, went upon deck for the comfort of his stomach; while the governor, experienced in these disasters, slipped into bed, where he lay at his ease, amusing himself with a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... from the author's pen; if we have not reason to fear that the thoughts have undergone some mutilation, we owe it to the little favour that the discourse of Bailly enjoyed in the sitting of the Academy in 1767. Those thoughts, however, would have defied the most squeamish mind, the most shadowy susceptibility. The panegyrist unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John. The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago



Words linked to "Squeamish" :   overnice, nice, prissy



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