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Disreputable   /dɪsrˈɛpjətəbəl/   Listen
Disreputable

adjective
1.
Lacking respectability in character or behavior or appearance.



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"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hester!" replied her brother. "How you could see anything pathetic, or pitiful as you call it, in that disreputable old humbug, I can't even imagine. A more ludicrous specimen of tumble-down humanity it would be impossible to find! A drunken old thief—I'll lay you any thing! Catch me leaving a sov where he could ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... You didn't seriously, think he was my bearer, did you? No, he's an old moonstone-seller who comes to see me occasionally. He's not so disreputable as he looks. I find him handy in the matter of bazaar politics, with which I consider it useful to keep ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... him at once, though he had not seen him for some years; it was Paradine, his disreputable brother-in-law—the "Uncle Marmaduke" who, by importing the mysterious Garuda Stone, had brought all these woes upon him; he noticed at once that his appearance was unusually prosperous, and that the braided smoking coat he wore over his evening clothes was new and handsome. "No wonder," ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... various kinds, which her mother had sent her from time to time, and which she could never bring herself to wear, because of the association. They had been worn in the moral mire of Monte Carlo and other places equally disreputable, and Bessie could no more have put them on than she could have adopted her mother's habits. In her linen dress, which she bought with money paid her for roses by the ladies who frequented the "George," she felt pure and respectable. But this gift ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... For dinner they gave you good soup, Rindfleisch, either poultry or roast meat, and one of the Mehlspeisen for which Bavaria is celebrated, some dish, that is, made with eggs and flour. There was a great variety of them, but I only remember one clearly, because I was impressed by its disreputable name. It was some sort of small pancake soaked in a wine sauce, and it was called versoffene Jungfern. Most of these inns kept no servants, and except in the Kurhaus there was not a black-coated waiter in the place. Our inn-keeper tilled his ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... throne; the royal arms above it and the little witness box to one side, where so many honest poor people are bullied, insulted and laughed at by third-rate blackguardly little "lawyers," and so many pitiful, pathetic and noble lies are told by pitiful sinners and disreputable heroes for a little liberty for a lost self, or for the sake of a friend—of a "pal" or a "cobber." The same overworked and underpaid magistrate trying to keep his attention fixed on the same old miserable scene before him; ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... in his mind to protest against this material interpretation of his disreputable state; but the sight in the mirror of his ignominiously scrubby and battered appearance silenced him. The barber's explanation was as good as any, seeing that he himself could give no satisfactory account of the circumstances which had reduced him to his sorry ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... were going on in a dozen underground kivas in the village. One pretty maiden with marvelous masses of gleaming black hair volunteered to help us interview her uncle, an old Snake Priest, about his religion. We found "Uncle" lounging in the sunshine, mending his disreputable moccasins. He was not an encouraging subject as he sat there with only a loin cloth by way of haberdashery. He welcomed us as royally, however, as if he wore a king's robes, and listened courteously while the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... surroundings. There was no shelter and no modern conveniences; not even a wash-hand-stand or water-jug. There was, of course, no central heating, and no electricity for one's smoothing-iron, so that one's clothing must become quite disreputable for want of pressing. Also the informal manner of cooking and eating was not what I had been accustomed to, and the idea of sleeping publicly on the bare ground was repugnant in the extreme. I mean to say, there was no vie intime. Truly it was a coarser type of wilderness than that which ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... "The fellows asked me to speak to you about it and to tell you to take a brace. Now, for instance, we have a sort of mess-table at the hotels and we'd like to ask you to belong, but—well—you see how it is—we have the officers to lunch whenever they're on shore, and you're so disreputable"— Keating scowled at Channing, and concluded, impotently, "Why don't you get yourself some decent clothes and—and ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... our affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on earth will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desert your home; I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope in your career. Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we are not; shady, to say the least of it. It's not a bit ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... Kantara just a fortnight, during which time we were disinfected and refitted, put through gas and exercised in field days on the desert. We had never been allowed to draw clothing in Palestine after Yalo as we were on the waiting list for France, and when we arrived at Kantara we were a most disreputable looking crowd—clothing patched and torn, garments showing where they should never be seen, and boots in some cases almost without soles at all. But when we marched out we were clad once more in new tunics, new trousers, and new boots, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... attend to these persons too." I imagined that we, the very ones who have brought and have been bringing these women to this condition for several generations, would take thought some fine day and reform all this. But, in the mean time, if I had only recalled my conversation with the disreputable woman who had been rocking the baby of the fever-stricken patient, I might have comprehended the full extent of the ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... anyone in Jersey," said Lady Mabel, in languid wonderment. "It is an altogether impossible place. Nobody in society goes there. It sounds almost as disreputable as Boulogne." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... which coupled itself in my mind, through a trick of the associative faculty, with the idea of a great fossil act for the British empire, framed on the principles of the game-laws; and, just wondering what sort of disreputable vagabonds geological poachers would become under its deteriorating influence, I laid hold of the pickaxe and broke into the stonefast floor; and thence I succeeded in abstracting,—feloniously, I dare say, though the crime has not yet got into the statute-book—some six or eight pieces ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... it was still decent, and with much care would remain so for a long time. That which he wore at home and in his street wanderings declared poverty at every point; it had been discarded before he left the old abode. In his present state of mind he cared nothing how disreputable he looked to passers-by. These seedy habiliments were the token of his degradation, and at times he regarded them (happening to see himself in a shop mirror) with pleasurable contempt. The same spirit often led him for a meal to the poorest ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... suppose that this kind of solemn condolence is part of a parson's ordinary duties, but it must be admitted that Considine performed it well. He impressed the Radways as being solid and dependable and a gentleman. His capability and discretion made them feel that Roscarna was not so disreputable and outlandish after all. He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... smart captain, who somehow or other even in the wet trenches had generally managed to appear spotless, like the officers of the French army, who always looked as though they had been turned out of a band-box, now presented a most disreputable appearance. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... for its dogs, not on account of their beauty or breed, for they are a disreputable lot of mongrel curs and bear the marks of many nightly brawls, but on account of the legions of them and their usefulness as scavengers. At nightfall the residents of Stamboul empty their garbage cans ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... was undeniable. She reigned for a long time the recognized queen of the demi-monde. I have beheld her in her glory on her throne—her two thrones, for she had two—one on the south side of the river, the other at the east end—not to mention the race course—surrounded by a retinue of the disreputable. She did not awaken in me the least curiosity, and I declined many opportunities to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... mayhap the story of a marvelous beast, half-tiger, half-wolf, reported to be running wild in France. The other gentlemen, waiting till the mail-bags were opened, listened and commented; while one or two of the squires, and a shabby, disreputable-looking minor canon made each notable name the occasion of a toast, whether of health to his majesty's friends or confusion to his foes. A squabble, as to whether the gallant Berwick should be reckoned as an ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... despair did the General Election of 1895 surprise them. The Parnellites had their old organisation—the National League—and the Anti-Parnellites had established in opposition to this the National Federation, so that Ireland had a sufficiency of Leagues but no concrete programme beyond a disreputable policy of hacking each other all round. As a matter of fact, we had in Cork city the curious and almost incredible spectacle of the Dillonites and Healyites joining forces to crush the Parnellite candidate, whilst ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... for a friend of her husband's. He was more or less disreputable, she believed, but he was none the less welcome on that account. It was just such men as he who knew how to make things a success. She relied upon the disreputable more than she ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." The influence of every man who is amenable to altruistic motives is needed against liquor, to counteract its lure; we must create a strong public sentiment and make it unfashionable and disreputable to drink. Happily the tide of liquor-drinking, which has been rising rapidly in the last half- century, owing to the increase in prosperity, the great influx of immigrants from liquor-drinking countries, and the stimulation ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... all this to the calmness with which your ordinary Christian discharges (his duty and) a drunken servant, or shakes off a disreputable friend. ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... for ever with that disreputable Caterina, and the unfortunate young man, her husband, had decamped from Paris. Wanting then to finish off my Fontainebleau, which was already cast in bronze, as well as to execute the two Victories which were going to fill the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... Cervera himself who had hold of me. He looked at me rather dubiously at first, because I had been down in the engine-room of the 'Merrimac,' where I got covered with oil, and that, with the soot and coal-dust, made my appearance most disreputable. I had put on my officer's belt before sinking the 'Merrimac,' as a means of identification, no matter what happened to me, and when I pointed to it in the launch the admiral understood and seemed satisfied. The first words he said to me when he understood ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... of Bangkok are crowded with vehicles of every description—ramshackle and disreputable rickshaws, the worst to be found in all the East, drawn by sweating coolies; the boxes of wood and glass on wheels, called gharries, drawn by decrepit ponies whose harness is pieced out with rope; creaking bullock carts driven by Tamils from Southern India; bicycles, ridden ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... a single fellow who would enjoy it more," answered Marcy, who told himself that Allison was just coward enough to engage in some such disreputable business. "You are just the lad for it. It is such fun to bring a swift vessel to and haul down the old flag in the face of men who are powerless to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... accordingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the first nucleus of the Roman theatre. But not only were these beginnings of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in a remarkable manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable. The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song-singing, imposing severe penalties not only upon incantations but even on lampoons composed against a fellow-citizen or recited before his door, and forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals. But far more ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... as the European chivalry of the middle ages. Among the other scattered traits of manners, it will be remarked as singular, according to the ideas of the present day, that open piracy and robbery are neither spoken of as disreputable, nor as attaching any slur to those who exercised them; insomuch, that the notoriety of Thyamis, having been a chief of freebooters, is not regarded as any obstacle to his assumption of the high-priesthood. But this, it will be found, was strictly in accordance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... the blanks. The town soon teemed with histories of Laura's origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in one vital particular-to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her birth, not to say a disreputable one. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... their professions written on a placard about their neck, like the scenery in Shakespeare's theatre. The precepts of economy have pierced into the lowest ranks of life; and there is now a decorum in vice, a respectability among the disreputable, a pure spirit of Philistinism among the waifs and strays of thy Bohemia. For lo! thy very gravediggers talk politics; and thy castaways kneel upon new graves, to discuss the cost of the monument and grumble at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the redoubtable Thomas Morton himself was sometime student of the law and a dweller in these precincts. It is now the hall of the Art Workers' Guild, and anywhere but in London would be incredibly quiet and quaint in that noisy, commonplace, modern neighborhood. It in nowise remembers the disreputable and roistering antipuritan, who set up his May-pole at Wollaston, and danced about it with his debauched aboriginies, in defiance of the saints, till Miles Standish marched up from Plymouth and made an end of such ungodly doings at the muzzles ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... monstrous joke devised by Phedro. Why, Josephine, if this were true, then he—the clown—would be your fiance, nor have a right to reject you, since sharing in your rather disreputable offence. Ah, what folly! [she places her hand upon her heart, gazing at PRINCE CHARLES] But how I would like to ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... at a little distance. With a whispered welcome and a drooping head, she pointed to a seat. Louis sat down nervous and overawed, wishing that he had never undertaken this impossible and depressing task. Who was he to be dealing with such a character as this dubious and disreputable woman? ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... at an orphanage. She was called their orphan, and twice a year they received accounts of her progress. They sent her a Christmas present annually, and her neat little letter of thanks was handed round for everybody to read. Poor Susannah Maude was the daughter of very disreputable parents; she had been rescued from a travelling caravan at the age of ten, and the authorities at the Alexandra Home had done their best to obliterate her past life from her memory. When she reached school-leaving age the question of her future career loomed on the horizon. After considerable ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... had to walk across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as disreputable-looking a medical man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... I do understand you, sir!" sharply replies the landlord. "If there is a dangerous or disreputable person in my house, sir, I would thank you to tell me, sir, and I will soon put him where the dogs won't ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... board fence surrounded the property on three sides, the fourth being bounded by a sluggish, disreputable creek whose fetid waters seemed to crawl onward even more slowly after receiving the noisome waste liquor from the tan-pits. At only one point, that nearest the village, did any of the buildings touch the encircling fence. There its sweep was broken by the facade of a squat two-story structure ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... took pleasure in their pungent pages, did so clandestinely, and with precaution. In carefully-locked desk, or on topmost shelf of bookcase, lurking behind an honourable front-rank of history and essay, the disreputable literature was bestowed. Nor was its reception more openly hospitable when arrayed in English garb. Translators there were, who strove to render into the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce—witty, frivolous, prurient, and amusing—of Gallic imagination. But either the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... dream of doing, and a number of things that such a man would not feel called upon to do that he would regard as imperative duties. And mixed up with so much fine intention and fine conduct was this disreputable streak of intrigue and this extraordinary claim that such misconduct was necessary to continued ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... all hands were astir. The sun soon shone brightly and we spread out our wet gear to dry, till the beach looked like a particularly disreputable gipsy camp. The boots and clothing had suffered considerably during our travels. I had decided to send Wild along the coast in the 'Stancomb Wills' to look for a new camping-ground, and he and I discussed the details of the journey while eating our breakfast of hot seal steak ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... burnished a spur viciously. "Old pleeceman—old son of a—" he retorted with a spiteful grin. "W'y, my old Kissiwasti here knows more abaht drill'n wot you do." He indicated a rather disreputable-looking gray parrot, preening itself in a cage which stood upon ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... anywhere from one to three months. By that time this inspector would have moved on—Austin knew the game. But three days later Thorne showed up early in the morning followed by a half-dozen interested rangers. In the most business-like fashion and despite the variegated objections of Austin and his disreputable satellites, Thorne and his men attached their ropes to the flimsy structure and literally pulled it ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... hospitable part of the world, it must be said that you have to do with the most easy and good-natured of great cities. If the proud aristocracies of the rest of Europe refuse admittance among their ranks to a disreputable millionaire, Paris stretches out a hand to him, goes to his banquets, eats his dinners, and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... proper for him to give it—and a husband's might differ widely. Besides, what is to be done for those women who are blessed with husbands incapable of teaching them; or, as is notoriously so frequently the case, who choose rather to spend their time in places of disreputable character than at their homes with ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... that a rencounter or duel was so far from being in fashion among the officers that served in the Parliament army, that on the contrary, it was as disreputable, and as great an impediment to advancement in the Service, as being ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... which ended in 1800. Her descendants numbered 834, of whom 709 were traced in local records from youth to death. One hundred and six of the 709 were born out of wedlock. There were 144 beggars, and 62 more who lived from charity. Of the women, 181 led disreputable lives. There were in the family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were sentenced for murder. In a period of some seventy-five years, this one family rolled up a bill of costs in almshouses, prisons, and correctional institutions amounting to at least ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... that, even did the constable look right at her, he would not discover that she was a white girl. She looked just as disreputable in every way as the Gypsy ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... frequenter of shy neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric characters. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells, German secret societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and "dives" of every complexion of the disreputable and dangerous. I have seen greasy Mexican hands pinned to the table with a knife for cheating, seamen (when blood-money ran high) knocked down upon the public street and carried insensible on board short-handed ships, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... chaffered with me (beginning at 18s.) over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of the human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14s., and I hurried back (for I was due there at eleven) to my office with my two disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if I would like to have it sent to my chambers, and K—was inquisitive to bluntness about it and my movements. But ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... Madam Hanska, which caused Georgia to retort that perhaps it would be better if people arranged their own libraries, and then they could put things where they wanted them. Then after she had given a resting place to what she denounced as some very disreputable French novels, she leaned against the shelves and declared it was ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... wants. The Court ladies have to lick his dirty fingers clean, for he refuses to use a finger-bowl at table. Take this for what it's worth. At any rate, there is much talk now of the Germans working through this disreputable creature. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... and famine. After this gracious and purely gratuitous piece of information he again withdrew, but strange mutterings still continued to issue forth from his lair. While I was sitting in the office the editor happened to drift in from the adjacent room crisply attired in a pair of ragged, disreputable trousers and a sleeveless gray sweater which was raveling in numerous places. It was the shock of ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... indeed Nature thus works by illusions and justifies the lying means by the benevolent end, it is hard to believe in a moral government of the universe, or to hope that an "absolute morality"—righteousness for its own sake—will be the outcome of such disreputable methods. But till the illusion of "absolute morality" is strong enough to take care of itself, and has passed from the professors to the populace, it is plainly for the interest and happiness of individuals and of society to hold fast ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... that I soon discovered had great influence in New York, doubtless by way of expiation for the rigid democratical notions that so universally pervade its society. And here I may remark, en passant, that while nothing is considered so disreputable in America as to be "aristocratic" a word of very extensive signification, as it embraces the tastes, the opinions, the habits, the virtues, and sometimes the religion of the offending party—on the other hand, nothing is ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... risks in this affair excepting myself. I, as the proprietor of the apartment where the assault was actually supposed to have taken place, did run a very grave risk, because I could never have proved an alibi. Theodore was such a disreputable mudlark that his testimony on my behalf would have been valueless. But with sublime sacrifice I accepted these risks, and you will presently see, Sir, how I was repaid for my selflessness. I pined in a lonely prison-cell while these two limbs of Satan ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... said all that you thought, perhaps you would remind me that a woman of whom nobody knows anything is always held to be disreputable. That girl, no doubt, has her decent ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender. They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person, deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... offenders to justice. Unfortunately for his reputation he was not content with a neutral attitude, but openly protected and rewarded the three chief offenders Tichelaer, Verhoef and Van Bankhem, all of them men of disreputable character. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... the examination of their baggage was going on. Little Willie was invited to take a hand, which he did in a rather perfunctory way, without any real interest in the proceedings. Indeed, his attention wandered to the doings of certain disreputable friends of his who had come down to the wharf in a spirit of curiosity, and Philip had to recall him to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... now became king of England; because he was the son of Sophia, granddaughter of James I., and professed the Protestant religion. He was a Hanoverian German, and did not understand the English language; he was stupid and disreputable, and better fitted to administer a German bierstube than a great kingdom. But the Act of Settlement of 1701 had stipulated that if William or Anne died childless, the Protestant issue of Sophia should succeed. That such a man should prove an acceptable sovereign both to Great ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... sure my husband would never allow it," said Mrs. Fielding with a frown. "These High Shale people are so hopelessly disreputable—such a ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... himself in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange combination of persons. What on earth could be the link between Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable menage on the third floor?... His heart answered ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... surpassed it. She can cuss in two or three languages not specified in the guarantee. The wife suggested we carry Polly to sister's. "But Uncle Tom will visit there and it would come out that the parrot belonged to us. Besides, it would be disreputable to have Polly's profanity ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... Aghori, Aghorpanthi. [7]—The most disreputable class of Saiva mendicants who feed on human corpses and excrement, and in past times practised cannibalism. The sect is apparently an ancient one, a supposed reference to it being contained in the Sanskrit drama Malati Madhava, the hero of which rescues his mistress from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Was it to benefit the poor that that odious Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... understand quite enough. Your own brother saw you bidding him an affectionate good-night at one o'clock, on my doorstep. Such things do not happen by accident. I wonder that you dare look me in the face after roaming the streets at that time of night with such a disreputable character." ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... these occasions; she feared, even, no small part of the attraction of them. Mr. Copley generally came back not exactly the same as when he went; there was an indescribable look and air which made Dolly's heart turn cold; a disreputable air of license, as if he had been indulging himself in spite of strong pledges given, and in disregard of gentle influences that were trying to deter him. And when he had not been on excursions, Dolly often knew that he had found his favourite ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... case of the "geographical President," for whom the charges are intended. Out of tenderness for the artist, let him for whom the garment is intended put it on, though it may not fit him,—and for our own parts, as humble members of the Anti-slave-trade, Anti-filibuster, and Anti-disreputable-things-generally Party, we don our Joseph's coat (for Mr. Choate could not make one that was not of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... and blue devils" who have so cruelly annoyed him. Every one has heard, and every one talks, of Irish grievances; but no one seems to know exactly what those grievances are: their existence appears to be so unquestionable, that to dispute it is not only useless but almost disreputable; and yet if one venture to enquire of those who declaim most loudly against them wherein they consist, they limit themselves to generalities, and quote the admitted state of the country as proof positive of English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... promises. I only claim obedience to my wishes until you are of age. I will accept your word until that date, and shall not go in search of you along the Mill Road, or any other disreputable portion of the town again. Your ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... that is in itself substantially meritorious and ennobling; while productive labour at the same time and by a like process becomes in a double sense intrinsically unworthy. Prescription ends by making labour not only disreputable in the eyes of the community, but morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man, and incompatible with ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... husband who is not jealous, and refrains from assailing his rival with his fists, is regarded as a ridiculous, contemptible and cowardly cuckold. And the laboring class is divided into the respectable section which takes the tradesman's view, and the disreputable section which enjoys the license of the plutocracy without its money: creeping below the law as its exemplars prance above it; cutting down all expenses of respectability and even decency; and frankly accepting squalor and disrepute as the price of ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... don't leave the room, I will. It's really disreputable to have you for a mother. You've never done ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... been disturbed by the howling of a dog, apparently in their own yard, but had paid no further attention to it than that of repeated mental objurgation: there stood the offender, looking up at her pitifully—ugly, disreputable, of breed unknown, one of the canaille! When the girl fell down, he darted at her, licked her cold face for a moment, then stretching out a long, gaunt neck, uttered from the depth of his hidebound frame the most melancholy appeal, not to Beenie, at whom he would ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... before. The head of the doll was rudely chipped from ivory, while the body was a rat skin stuffed with grass. The arms and legs were bits of wood, perforated at one end and sewn to the rat skin torso. The doll was quite hideous and altogether disreputable and soiled, but Meriem thought it the most beautiful and adorable thing in the whole world, which is not so strange in view of the fact that it was the only object within that world upon which she might bestow her ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... first thought of the brethren was for Joseph, and their first concern, to seek him. For three days they made search for him everywhere, even in the most disreputable quarters of the city. Meantime Joseph was in communication with the overseer of the station kept open for the sale of corn, and, hearing that his brethren had not appeared there, he dispatched some of his servants to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had slept, they cooked oatmeal and departed in the morning for destinations unknown to each other. They sometimes slept, more often they talked, or ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot

... happened. As no one really knew what had happened, no two of the voices told the same story; but the superintendent catching the words "murderers, thieves, tramps, brakeman killed, and car robbed," became convinced that he had a most serious case on his hands, and that the disreputable-looking young fellows before him must be exceedingly dangerous characters. In order to arrive at an understanding of the case more quickly, he ordered the room to be cleared of all except the prisoners, the station agent, and the trainmen of Freight Number 73, whom ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... government of his kingdom. Always in want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to his favorites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement of the coinage; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax upon salt, and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise. In the single year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from four livres ten sous to eighteen livres. To meet the requirements of his government and the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... unequivocal proofs of devotion. Thus, it has been said that Real, "having recourse to extraordinary means," could have caused the arrest of "the sister-in-law and daughter of the fugitive, and their incarceration in the prisons of Caen with filthy and disreputable women." Le Chevalier, informed of their incarceration—by whom?—would have offered himself in place of the two women, and the police ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... revulsion, she saw the deformed man squatting close to her, his chuddah-draped head lodged upon his knees. He did not stir at her coming though she felt convinced that he was aware of her, aware probably of everything that passed within a considerable radius of his disreputable person. His dark face, lined and dirty, half-covered with ragged black hair that ended in a long thin wisp like a goat's beard on his shrunken chest, was still turned to the east as though challenging the sun that was smiting a swift course ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... this alert, efficient, cultured Italian pastor. He found the parish to which he was assigned composed of several thousand of his countrymen in a Hudson river town; the building to be used for church purposes a dirty, run-down old hall, a part of the most disreputable ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... Apparition of one Mrs. Veal.[4] When, in 1720, he undertook to write the life of the popular fortune-teller, Duncan Campbell—a puff which illustrates almost better than anything else Defoe's extraordinary ingenuity in putting a respectable face upon the most disreputable materials—he had another proof of the avidity with which people run to hear marvels. He followed up this clue with A System of Magic, or a History of the Black Art; The Secrets of the Invisible World ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... that have tranquillity in their souls, they that have subdued their wrath, obtain a high reward by means of their numerous sacrifices. That reward, however, is unattainable by men that are wicked in their deeds, overwhelmed by covetousness, mean and disreputable with souls unblessed and impure. Therefore, must thou know, O Brahmana that this reward which is obtained by persons having their souls under control and which is unobtainable by the ignorant and the foolish,—this which is attainable by asceticism alone,—is productive of high merit. And, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... that conclusion when the door opened again. Terry stood before them in the old, loose, disreputable clothes of a cow- puncher. The big sombrero swung in his hand. The heavy Colt dragged down in its holster over his right hip. His tanned ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... friends. It was Stephen! They dashed ashore, and in a moment were across the lock and on the spot. The spectacle which met their eyes as they came up was a strange one. The central figure was the luckless Stephen, in the clutches of three or four disreputable fellows, one of whom was Cripps the younger, who, with loud laughter at the boy's struggles and brutal unconcern at his terror, were half dragging, half carrying him towards the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... vigorously in a speech of five hours' duration. "He spoke," said Mr. Gladstone, "from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next." He defended his policy at every point. In every step taken he had been influenced by the sole desire that the meanest, the poorest, even the most disreputable subject of the English Crown should be defended by the whole might of England against foreign oppression. He reminded them of all that was implied in the Roman boast, Civis Romanus sum, and urged the House to make it clear that a British subject, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... born under that star. Every move I make, up bobs Saturn and blocks it. He's the hoodoo planet of the heavens. They say he's 73,000 miles in diameter and no solider of body than split-pea soup, and he's got as many disreputable and malignant rings as Chicago. Now, what kind of a star is that ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... with those who dared to lower the high morality of the new commonwealths dedicated to righteousness. But even the Puritans and Cavaliers were merely human, and crime would enter in spite of all efforts to the contrary. Bold adventurers, disreputable spirits, men and women with little respect for the laws of man or of God, crept into their midst; many of the immigrants to the Middle and Southern Colonies were refugees from the streets and prisons of London; some of the indented servants had but crude notions ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... into some suspicion. Upon the occasion, for example, of the death of Pythonice, who was Harpalus's mistress, for whom he had a great fondness, and had a child by her, he resolved to build her a sumptuous monument, and committed the care of it to his friend Charicles. This commission, disreputable enough in itself, was yet further disparaged by the figure the piece of workmanship made after it was finished. It is yet to be seen in the Hermeum. as you go from Athens to Eleusis, with nothing in its appearance answerable to the sum of thirty ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... a fairly well-educated girl. At the ale-house, however, she formed an acquaintance with a woman named Mary Tracey, a dissolute character, and with two thieves called Alexander. Of these three disreputable people we shall be hearing presently, for Sarah tried to implicate them in this crime which she certainly committed alone. It is said that the Newgate officers recognized Sarah on her arrival. She had often been to the prison to ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... Marmor Norfolciense (ante, i. 141) Johnson says:—'I know that the knowledge of the alphabet is so disreputable among these gentlemen [of the army], that those who have by ill-fortune formerly been taught it have partly forgot it by disuse, and partly concealed it from the world, to avoid the railleries and insults to which their education ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Then if you have not, there is one delight left you. But you must be away out in Wyoming, with the morning sun just gilding the distant peaks, and your pork and beans must be out of a can, heated in a disreputable old frying-pan, served with coffee boiled in a battered old pail and drunk from a tomato-can. You'll never want iced melons, powdered sugar, and fruit, or sixty-nine varieties of breakfast food, if once you sit ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... but it was in reality only two hours later when Lillian Gale returned from the apartment across the hall, heavy eyed and dishevelled, her gown splashed with water, her rouge rubbed off in spots, her whole appearance most disreputable. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... calfskin boots, which were so overlaid with mud that it was hard to tell what was their original color. "I bought those boots in Boston only two weeks ago. Everybody called them stylish. Now they are absolutely disreputable." ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger

... have I, an entire stranger, to come blundering along like a June beetle and disturb your rest? You did not look forward to associations with night editors and like disreputable people when you chose this sheltered nook of the world, and nestled under Mrs. Yocomb's wing. You have the prior ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... no; I wouldn't have her here on any account," I answered as I thought of the disreputable characters who in shoals would soon be crowding the decks, and who were even now waiting in the boats until they were allowed ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... its length and breadth he could have found no more evil, disreputable character than Long Bill Kearney. Despised by honest citizens and the renegades of the bad lands, alike, he nevertheless served these latter by furnishing them whiskey and supplies at exorbitant prices. Also, he bootlegged systematically ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... pump-clips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were "out," and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. He thought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of bills and claims. Life presented itself for the first time as a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Duke of Hereward! What on earth could a gentleman have to say to a charge as absurd as it was infamous, thus made upon him by a disreputable ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She despised sentiment and ridiculed enthusiasm, thought skepticism both wicked and disreputable, but at the same time fanaticism was silly, and not nearly so respectable as that quiet, easy-going religion which does nothing of which society would disapprove, but does not break its heart in trying to found the kingdom of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... women of a conservative city of one hundred and fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the Lord's ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... in future, only to indulge in gambling in places where you may be fairly assured of the character of the men you play with. I think, in conclusion, that you may all feel grateful to Mr. Cotter for refusing to prosecute. It has saved you from having to appear in court as witnesses in so utterly disreputable an affair." ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... young chaplain who, like myself, found himself face to face with his first encounter with sudden death, and who, poor soul, had over-primed himself with stimulant. I shall never forget, either, that ghoul of a Calcraft, with his disreputable grey hair, his disreputable undertaker's suit of black, and a million dirty pin-pricks which marked every pore of the skin of his face. Calcraft took the business business-like, and pinioned his man in the cell (with a terror-stricken ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... Nikky was saying. "He always eats. And when I take him for a walk in the park, he digs up bones that other dogs have buried, and carries them home with him. We look very disreputable." The Crown Prince laughed with delight, but just then Nikky saw Hedwig, and his ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How did you receive ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not add that it was having seen Ben Davis taking odds with his young brother which had spurred him to such instantaneous action with that disreputable personage; who, beyond doubt, only received a tithe part of his deserts, and merited to be double-thonged off ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... when General Butler's power was at its height. You could hardly take up a morning paper without dreading that you should read of the removal from some position of honor of some brave honest soldier who had deserved well of his country, and the substitution of some disreputable person in his place. All the dishonesty of the time seemed to be combined and rallied to his support. Three of his trusted lieutenants in different parts of the Commonwealth were convicted of crime and sent to the State ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... thoroughly or not at all, the study remained as a whole comfortably mussy. Sometimes, however, Jane had twinges of conscience, resulting in the disappearance of all old, unbound, and destructible matter which presented itself. So the professor painstakingly replaced equally old and disreputable matter around the study when the whirlwind had passed, and waited till the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... could have been engaged in a secret trade, highly dangerous to the peace and security of the nation. It is difficult even now to imagine that after landing the Prime Minister and couple of bishops at Cowes the yacht should have started off to keep a midnight appointment with a disreputable tramp steamer in an unfrequented part of the North Sea; that Bob Power, after making himself agreeable for a fortnight to Lady Moyne, should have sweated like a stevedore at the difficult job of transhipping a ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... head, 'but this is the worst spec I ever made in my life. Fed on pork, fluted deaf, bit with bugs, and robbed at cards—fairly, downrightly robbed. Never was a more reg'ler plant put on a man. Thank goodness, however, I haven't paid him—never will, either. Such a confounded, disreputable scoundrel deserves to be punished—big, bad, blackguard-looking fellow! How the deuce I could ever be taken in by such a fellow! Believe he's nothing but a great poaching blackleg. Hasn't the faintest outlines of a gentleman about ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... of a woman who had more than once taken back a disreputable husband whom she always professed to dislike. Aid was given sparingly and intermittently during his absences; but finally the woman in a burst of frankness told the secretary that she had never felt confident the society would stand behind her. Each time the man came back ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord

... the steps of the Rheingold, a disreputable drinking cellar, and disappeared from my sight down its steps. A great shout greeted him, and the rattle of tankards on a table, as he joined what was evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... clean, fresh paper of enormous value is going out to be spread all over the country, another stream of soiled, torn and altogether disreputable-looking paper is ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... horses to take her to the freshness of the high lying inland moors, for a boat to carry her across the tide-river to the less confined air and outlook of the Bar. Sight and sense of the black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Hazard, at which large fortunes have been won and lost. It is exceedingly simple, and at times can become painfully interesting. Cheating is impossible, unless with loaded dice, which have been used and detected by their splitting in two, but never, perhaps, unless at some disreputable silver hell. The mode of remunerating the owner of the rooms was a popular one. The loser never paid, and the winner only when he succeeded in throwing three mains in succession; and even then the "box fee," as it was called, was limited to 5s.—a mere trifle from what he must ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... who declared that Ves Young's rattle-trap wan't fit to do nothin' but haul fish heads to the fertilizer factory, the Calvin beams and boards were piled high on the wagon and with Ves on the driver's seat and Simp perched, like a disreputable carrion crow on top of the ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... equally consulted. With respect to walls, those who say that a courageous people ought not to have any, pay too much respect to obsolete notions; particularly as we may see those who pride themselves therein continually confuted by facts. It is indeed disreputable for those who are equal, or nearly so, to the enemy, to endeavour to take refuge within their walls—but since it very often happens, that those who make the attack are too powerful for the bravery and courage of those few who oppose ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... scheme. General Booth allows that much. But there are two factors in his scheme which, if not new, at least acquire a new prominence. These two factors are help and hope. Society drops these two h's. For help it substitutes money-giving, and as for hope for the disreputable, it has none. The personal contact of General Booth's workers, of his 10,000 officers, is an essential feature of the scheme. They take the man or the woman as they enter the shelter, and prevent it from ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... laughter. "I call it the Cooing Column, because it's the place where all the doves of society, soiled and clean, get their little grain of personal advertisement. They pay for it, of course. There it is that the disreputable Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup gets it announced that she wore a collar of diamonds at the Opera, and there the battered, dissipated Lord 'Jimmy' Jenkins has it proudly stated that his yacht is undergoing 'extensive alterations.' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... of an absconded felon, against whom a hue-and-cry is made public. Or if there be really any advantage in it, why should I, or any single individual, take it over the rest of our brethren? But it has a nasty disreputable look, and I have fancied the whole day the finger of the town pointed at me, as much as to say, 'That is he! Now for the reward!' Leave this expedient to the police officers, or to those who have a taste ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... man. "I trusted you to go over there, and you come back a disreputable wreck. All my teaching seems to be thrown away upon a pugnacious ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... upon the discarded and somewhat disreputable garment, flung it carelessly about her shapely shoulders, shrugging them coquettishly, her great eyes shyly uplifting to his relenting face, and began swiftly to fasten up her already short dress in disregard of the exposure ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... merriment of the public, and we believe Tom, Jerry, and Logic, were married off at the end of the tale, as if they had been the most moral personages in the world. There is some goodness in this pity, which authors and the public are disposed to show towards certain agreeable, disreputable characters of romance. Who would mar the prospects of honest Roderick Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones? only a very stern moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn and that hero without a surname, Corinthian Tom, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray



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